A year ago if you’d told someone you were on Twitter they’d either have thought you had too much time on your hands or needed to get out more. Well, a year is a long time in the digital world, and Twitter is now the trendy web address being added to people’s business cards.
What was once a niche communication tool for the techie crowd is now being used by TV presenters, pop stars and presidents for talking about themselves and interacting with their fans.
Whilst much of the media spotlight has focused on what ‘Wossy’ is supposed to have said or what mundane comments Britney has tweeted, Twitter has recently been hitting the headlines because of its growth of 974% in the last year.
With Russell Brand now one of its most popular members, you can expect to see Twitter’s popularity continue to grow as awareness spreads and more people flock to join, which is something brands are only too aware of.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is described as ‘micro blogging’ because of the strict 140 character limit on messages. Whilst little more than the length of a text message, this restriction means messages (or Tweets) are more spontaneous, impulsive and immediate than conventional blog posts, leading to it being used in a different way.
Common types of Tweets include sharing interesting web links, comments on current events (photos of the plane that crash landed in NY’s Hudson surfaced on Twitter within minutes), asking and responding to questions, or telling people what you’re doing.
Its conversational nature means that a large segment of Twitter’s estimated 3 million users are professionals using it as a networking and personal branding tool.
However, Twitter’s growing popularity could see it soon become a mainstream social media tool to partner Facebook in enabling people to stay in touch with friends, family and the things they care about (which could include brands).
Why should brands care about Twitter?
Twitter enables people to interact in groups based on their shared passions and interests, which is something brands are desperate to be a part of.
However, brands know that if they simply use Twitter to broadcast sales messages (otherwise known as spamming) they risk being ignored or excluded from their Twitter audience altogether.
So brands are treading carefully to make sure they don’t startle people on Twitter or ruffle anyone’s feathers (sorry, pun intended). But those who have made progress into becoming a valued member are discovering its potential as a marketing tool,
The ways in which brands can use Twitter include:
Humanizing the brand – digital can seem a robotic, unfriendly medium, and Twitter can give brands a human voice for talking directly with customers.
Engaging customers – people are starting to expect more from brands than just having messages broadcast at them. They now want to be able to interact and gain more value from the relationship. Twitter can provide a platform for interaction and enable brands to engage with their customers and foster closer relationships.
Online PR and brand monitoring– a dissatisfied customer with a large network and an axe to grind can spread bad feeling like the bubonic plague online (just ask Dell). However, search filters on Twitter can enable brands to respond to criticism in an open format and enhance their reputation for customer service. People hate being ignored, but love being listened and responded to.
Distribute offers and announce events – Tesco owned US chain ‘Fresh and Easy’ uses Twitter to post special offers and details on new store openings, so don’t be surprised if your local Tesco appears on Twitter soon. Whilst brands need to be careful they don’t use it purely to push sales, the permission based nature of Twitter can make it an effective tool for distributing offers.
Along with these benefits you can also add the low cost of marketing on Twitter due to its simplicity and because…well…it’s free (at the time of writing anyway).
Twitter presents brands with the challenge of being able to match the tone of their Tweets to their brand voice (whilst still sounding human) and allowing the freedom for open conversations with customers.
However, Twitter is a valuable new tool available to digital marketers for enabling greater engagement with customers, responding to criticism openly and building closer relationships with their brand.
Just make sure you have something of value to say, because nobody likes a bore who just endlessly praises themselves.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
Being able to tell compelling stories that your customers invest in emotionally and want to be a part of can be powerful indeed.
Barack Obama’s story has gripped the world since he arrived on the political scene in 2007, and defeated the Democrat’s strongest brand in Hilary Clinton. His political machine then rolled on to win the Presidency in a landslide, with millions flocking to Washington to worship their hero.
Whilst Barack Obama is indeed an impressive, inspirational and charismatic individual, his savvy use of the internet to engage with voters played a major role in his triumph at the polls, and is now the benchmark for how campaigns will be fought digitally in the future.
Obama Branded Digital Media
Whilst some said his relative young age was a disadvantage, it was Obama’s youthful understanding of people’s desire to connect and engage, rather than be dictated to, that drove the success of his online campaign.
Barack understood how many voters were disenchanted with the name calling political diatribe served on TV, so he embarked on a web campaign to enable people to engage with his brand, to raise donations and to rally his troops into offline action.
Rather than merely a digital imitation of a campaign leaflet, Obama’s website served as a multifunctional, interactive and data capturing digital headquarters.
Upon arrival visitors were (and still are) politely asked whether they’d like to donate to his campaign, which helps to explain where a large chunk of his $600 million war chest (the largest in history) came from. Rather than rely on armies of volunteers rattling collection tins, Obama used the reach of the web to pluck small donations from millions of people’s pockets.
Almost as valuable as the donation was the email address captured along with it. Every digital marketer knows how powerful email can be for maintaining contact and building relationships with website visitors. And Obama’s team were no slouches, using their massive database to request further donations, to send updates on the campaign and (most importantly) remind supporters to vote.
The website also featured a blog, video clips and Flickr photos from the frontlines to keep every visitor engaged with the Obama brand for as long as possible.
Arguably the cleverest tool of Obama’s entire digital campaign was the creation of a social networking section on the website. my.brackobama.com (or my.bo for short) enabled Obama’s supporters to create a profile, join local groups and (now this is the clever part) create offline fundraising activities of their own.
After entering their address, participants would be given a hit list of people to contact, maps of where they lived and a fundraising target to aim for before being sent on their merry way.
Obama’s campaign has been hailed for its success in rallying people to the booths, and with over 1 million members there can be little doubt that my.barackobama.com played a leading role.
Social Media Marketing
Obama wasn’t just reliant on people visiting his website to engage with and invest time in his brand. Profiles were created on all the popular social networking sites so that people could connect with his campaign wherever they digitally went.
At the time of writing Obama’s Facebook group has 3.9 million friends and 554k wall posts, whilst his MySpace page has an additional 1.1 million friends to add to the pile.
Whenever people join the groups or write messages they’re investing time and emotion in the Obama brand, offering a level of engagement impossible to achieve through TV ads and fundraising events alone.
Why rely on people catching your speech on TV when they can replay it at anytime on YouTube?
Videos on Obama’s YouTube channel have now been watched over 20 million times, and repeating the power of his speeches to persuade people to believe in his cause.
Online video has proven to be so successful that one political strategist has suggested it could be used for regular half hour addresses, eliminating the need to spend millions buying slots on TV.
[A clip of Sarah Palin being ridiculed on Saturday Night Live attracted over 8 million views on YouTube, adding another digital boost to the Obama campaign.]
What next for the Web 2.0 President?
The signs are that Obama’s love affair with the web is set to continue.
Whilst decorators were repainting the White House, Obama’s marketing team were updating the Whitehouse.gov website. Gone is the static brochureware of George Bush, and in comes an interactive, vibrant blog driven website designed to keep people updated on what’s occurring and engaged with the Obama brand.
Obama has already stated that he intends to run his presidency based on communication, transparency and participation. And there will plenty of people watching to see he does both digitally and in the real world.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
The last few decades have been a bumper time for brands and advertisers. In the evenings, they could rely on people being slumped in sofas around the TV, devouring advertising as hungrily as their microwave meals.
However, times have changed. People are now fast forwarding through the ads, or switching the TV off altogether. The days of entertainment only being found on the screen in the living room are over, because the screens in studies and bedrooms are now being used for a wider range of entertainment than just computer games.
Whether it’s watching music videos on YouTube, throwing sheep at their Facebook friends or saving the price of a paper by reading news online, people are finding entertainment that’s more engaging than that on the TV.
But the behaviour of most interest to brands is the manner in which people are forming into digital networks. They’re creating and sharing content in blogs, forums and networking sites strewn throughout the web on every topic imaginable.
People are adopting the tribal instinct to form groups based on shared passions and interests in the digital realm, which brands are desperate to become a part of.
A challenge and an opportunity
The challenge brands face is being able to follow the migration of their audiences from the TV and onto the web, and being able to engage with them in a manner that’s welcomed.
Adopting interruption style advertising tactics to force their way into people’s digital lives is a definite no, no. This will be at best ignored, and at the worst repelled if people feel their attention is being hijacked by an ignorant advertiser.
Instead brands need to find a way of becoming a valued part of social media. This means providing content people find entertaining, valuable or informative to barter for their time.
Whilst it presents a challenge, social media also presents an opportunity.
By providing people content they want to consume, interact with and share, brands can use social media to build positive responses, increase traffic to their websites and, ultimately, increase sales in the real world.
Social media marketing in action
Here are a few well known social media marketing campaigns:
Nike Running – rather than dazzle visitors with pop up discount offers and ads, this website enables visitors to create a profile, set a training schedule and interact with other members by organising runs or sharing maps of their favourite routes. As noted in Business Week, Nike’s website harnesses social networking to foster a positive association with the brand as a relevant, valued part of their lives.
Dell – perhaps the most infamous example of a brand that felt the dark side of the web when complaints on its customer service spread like wildfire. After getting its fingers burnt, Dell has embraced social media at every opportunity as a tool for engaging with its customers. It now has a range of blogs, Twitter feeds and even its own island in Second Life ticked off the list of social media tools.
Blendtec – its series of ‘Will it Blend?’ videos on YouTube has been watched by millions wanting to see the power of its blenders in action tearing through everyday objects such as a Nike shoe, golf balls and a Rubik’s cube. Has the campaign had any impact on sales? A 500% increase isn’t bad.
Can you blend an iPhone? Yes you can!
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
Whilst some might be wishing to get through this year as quickly as possible, we’re excited about the prospects for 2009 and the developments taking place in such an exciting industry (we like to think so anyway).
There can be little doubt that marketing is going to experience some substantial changes, and here are our predictions for the ones to watch out for in 2009:
- Tightening budgets mean brands will be demanding marketing that’s more measurable, and will be spending less on big TV and outdoor projects. The measurability of email and other digital campaigns, such as personalised URLs, will hasten the shift of budgets from traditional to online marketing.
- Email marketing will continue to be popular because of its familiarity, measurability and effectiveness in building customer relationships. More sophisticated data collection means email will become more targeted and can deliver personalised one-to-one marketing campaigns, rather than one size fits all mass mailings, which risk getting flagged as spam.
- The web will continue to grow as an entertainment and social medium where people spend more time watching skateboarding monkeys on YouTube and poking their friends on Facebook. In response, expect to see more marketing aimed at connecting with customers on a more personal level and to present a human face to a business’ identity.
- Print will continue to defy digital fan boys by maintaining its position as the medium in which most people prefer to receive offers. Campaigns integrating an initial print stage followed by digital activity will become more targeted, measurable and popular.
- The proliferation of the iPhone, and other true web enabled handsets, will continue pushing the growth of the mobile web at a healthy rate, and mobile marketing along with it. Advertisers will harness the popularity of social networking with the introduction of free aggregators that collect together content from different websites into one place in exchange for wedging ad messages between the Facebook updates and Twitter feeds. Brands also will rush to release iPhone apps & games, with most of them being awful.
- Yahoo’s share price will continue to plummet as it struggles to dislodge Google’s tyrannical grip of the online advertising market. Eventually it’s forced to crawl to Microsoft, with its cap in hand, and sell its search functionality at a knockdown price.
- Apple carries on calling Microsoft a nerd, infuriating Microsoft and making it try even harder to become cool, at which it continues to fail.
- Google buys Iceland (the country, not the supermarket) after the monopolies commission bans it from buying up more of the digital space.
- Disintegrating newspaper sales force the Sun and Daily Mirror to combine into a single daily. The low cost of office space in London means they’re spared from sharing the same offices, and can continue competing over who has got the best front page on their websites, which attract more views than their papers ever did.
- By June everyone owns a digibox and routinely fast forward through the ad breaks. The collapse of ad revenue means ITV and C4 can no longer afford to make their own programmes. Whilst they’ve been awarded part of the BBC’s license fee (following another campaign by ‘outraged’ Daily Mail readers), the BBC stubbornly refuses to let them onto the iPlayer. The cost of advertising becomes so low that brands start broadcasting their own TV shows. Highlights include ‘Celebrity Demolition Derby’ sponsored by Volvo and a soap opera based in a glamorous Stella Artois brewery.
- As 2009 draws to a close it’s the businesses who’ve continued marketing during the recession that’ll be best positioned to prosper as the climate improves. Along with maintaining their presence in the marketplace, they’ll also have developed their expertise in delivering targeted, cost effective marketing, whilst their rivals will struggle to regain the market share they’ve lost from remaining silent.
So those are a few of our serious predictions (and a couple less so) of what you can expect to see happening in 2009.
Perhaps the main message you’ll hear repeated everywhere is that now is not the time to panic, go into hibernation and cut back on your marketing altogether.
2009 will be the year in which marketing becomes smarter and more cost effective.
It needs to respond to the changes that were already taking place before the ‘r’ word was mentioned, and to use the tools at your disposal to deliver marketing that’s more targeted, more personalised and more effective in engaging with your customers.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
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