All A-Twitter

LOVE IT OR LOATHE IT, MARKETERS NEED TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE MICROBLOG SERVICE

It's safe to say that marketers fall into three categories when it comes to microblogging platform Twitter: love, loathing and utter confusion. And right now confusion's got the big numbers.

That will have to change, because Twitter is set to grow even bigger in the near future. Marketers will have to learn more about it, from the basic mechanics to how it may actually integrate with their current brand and direct-response efforts.

Marketing research firm eMarketer recently readjusted its forecast of the size of the twittering masses in coming years. While the firm's best estimate says 18 million U.S. adults are using the platform today, that base will grow about 45% next year and hit 26 million users. That's more than 15% of the U.S. population that will be on the Internet next year. It's not e-mail numbers or even Facebook, but you can't ignore that take-up rate.

Twitter deniers also took pleasure in recent research and coverage that suggested the platform has its limits in both demographic reach and message content. A New York Times front page article proclaimed that teens don't Twitter and, in fact, consider it “weird.” Meanwhile, Web analysis firm Pear Analytics examined 2,000 U.S. and U.K. tweets over a two-week period and sorted them into buckets according to the nature of their content. The result: More than two-fifths of the tweets analyzed were pointless babble of the “I'm eating a sandwich now” variety.

But teen fears and useless chatter aside, brands are starting to learn how to put Twitter to work. And while those success stories may seem flukey or industry-specific, they point to some general principles that other marketers will want to keep in mind when mounting their own first forays into Twitter territory.

The state of Twitter

At a recent ad:tech Chicago discussion on “The Twitter Effect,” Performics vice president of search and performance media Craig Greenfield ran down a list of microblog successes and developments that should convince even skeptics not to dismiss Twitter out of hand. For example, Dell Outlet reported in June that offers sent out exclusively via its @DellOutlet Twitter account have brought in $2 million in revenue from followers — not counting the Twitter traffic that goes to the main Dell.com site to purchase new systems.

And Southwest Airlines launched a promotion in May that asked its 27,000+ Twitter followers to join in a photo hunt. Southwest sent out a call for a different travel-related picture every day for a week and asked entrants to tweet back their snapshots. Each picture contest would produce one randomly drawn winner of a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas and a two-night stay in an MGM property.

Southwest also made heavy CRM use of Twitter after a hole in one of its planes forced an inspection of its entire fleet back in mid-July.

On a smaller and safer scale, Greenfield pointed to Freshii, a chain of fresh-food eateries with franchises in the U.S. and Canada, which uses an @freshii account to tweet free food offers and Twitter-only discounts to their followers.

Twitter is making its presence felt in other areas of online marketing, Greenfield pointed out. Microsoft's new Bing search engine is testing following a few thousand prominent or popular Twitter users, from Ryan Seacrest and Al Gore to tech writer Kara Swisher, and adding their most recent tweets to search results on their names. That could be the first step to a much tighter integration of Twitter and organic search.

Tweets from the coal mine

Erin Vogel, strategic director for digital agency Pixel, thinks Hollywood is tapping into some trends with Twitter that the wider world of marketers can profit from. Entertainment companies have the will to take early risks and spend money to reach consumers in experimental ways. But as those channels merge with the mainstream, best practices evolve and the costs become less risky for general marketers.

“Hollywood is really the canary in the coal mine when it comes to how to use some of these new digital resources including Twitter,” she told the ad:tech Chicago audience. “These technologies will eventually trickle down to your brand.”

For one thing, entertainment brands understand that consumers are information snackers. Late-night talk shows tweet that evening's guest lineup on the assumption that people can't watch (or set their TiVo to record) every show.

Consumers also like to be the first to know something. So the ABC Inner Circle uses Twitter as well as e-mail to send out information about its fall TV schedule, and Universal Studios is tweeting to fans about the new “Horror Nights” attractions it's building in Orlando and Los Angeles.

And of course, Hollywood has used Twitter to run contests. In August, Britney Spears dropped hints on her Twitter page about where New York fans could find her, with tickets to her Madison Square Garden show for the first to arrive. Several hundred figured out that she was waiting at the Hershey Store in Times Square.

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