A Startup Guy

"I love Twitter" photo from Lost Art of Blogging blog

OK. In my last post I noted what Twitter has done for me. But how do others use it to effect? One of the fun things to watch as Twitter has grown is how it’s gone from being a platform for marketers and techno-geeks to becoming a real communication tool for people from many walks of life. Early on (a year ago), we had lots of discussions about if people like CEOs would ever adopt Twitter. I had my doubts as there is (at least at this time) no measurable return on investment for using Twitter. Interactions online don’t generally directly yield sales. And CEOs are usually too busy to bother tweeting on a regular basis. Despite that, they’re coming online. And its fascinating to see how they’re adapting Twitter to work for them. Many people still don’t get it. There are a lot of marketers rushing to open Twitter accounts for their clients because they’ve heard that’s where they need to be. “You’ve got to be on Twitter. It’s the new frontier.” But many more ARE getting it. They understand that Twitter is for talking AT people, but for talking to them. And if you’re lucky, starting a conversation with them. Here are some examples:

Politics
Twitter was a breakout this political cycle. We saw congressmen and senators adopt the service. We saw a John McCain campaign staffer get in trouble for using the service to point people to questionable videos. But we also saw Barack Obama use the service as an outreach program. It was a big part of his grassroots organizing system. Obama became so successful at it that his was the first user account to garner more than 100,000 followers.

John McCain, on the other hand, never really got Twitter. His campaign had an account (opened by default by the Twitter folks simply to enforce a fairness policy), but only made 25 tweets and only picked up fewer than 5,000 followers.

Entertainment
Twitter may prove to be marketing gold for some people in the entertainment industry. Not as a push/sell tool so much as a community-building tool. Some accounts are actually set up and used by the entertainment personality. Many are set up by PR, marketing or agency people. In both cases, again, some people get the power of Twitter, many don’t. One case for the “don’t” category is county music star Aaron Tippin. He’s got great music, but his Twitter account proves a bit tone deaf. I’m sure it was set up by a label or PR flunkie, but it’s Grade A fail. Aaron’s account was set up in June 2008, follows no one and has only 28 followers. It also has a paltry 2 entries. One notes that they’re setting up a Twitter account. The other encourages people to go buy Aaron Tippin’s newest CD. No wonder there are only 28 followers.

On the other hand, there are plenty of celebrities using Twitter to build community and communicate with fans. Some follow back, like rapper MC Hammer, others don’t but are still very conversational, such as Heroes stars Greg Grunberg (there’s something fun about Greg posting photos of his chair on the set) and Brea Grant and Christian music artist Jeremy Camp. They don’t follow many people, but they do keep up with conversations about them and often respond to people who address them.

Business
Another fun trend to watch has been businesses getting on Twitter. They were slow to adopt at first, but they’re beginning to carve out strategies on how to effectively use Twitter. You can now contact Comcast (Comcast Cares), Zappos (a phenomenal online shoe seller, this Twitter account is actually manned by their CEO), Virgin America and The Home Depot (manned by one of their corporate communications people, but well run). Dell has become legendary in their use of social media to connect with customers, including their use of Twitter. They have some 23 Twitter accounts, including one that links to Dell employees who are Twitter users, some for work, some not. As always, some of these accounts are used well, some are just more places for PR people to push information.

In my opinion, Twitter works best when used as a communications tool. That means to put out meaningful information and respond to others as well. It also works best when it’s personal. You don’t have to be the CEO of a corporation or an entertainment star to use the “official” Twitter account (though it helps), but the communication needs to be personal. People need to feel a connection with whoever is talking for the Twitter account. Otherwise, it’s just a one-way conversation.

One final word of warning, be careful about fake users. There are plenty of people who have Twitter accounts claiming to be someone they’re not. It’s mostly done for fun, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to be tricked.

Additional info:
Jeremy Peppers’ rules for using Twitter
A list of companies, celebrities, governments and others of note using Twitter
6 Unual Entities That Tweet

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