Twitter is a Broadcast Medium

Courtney Hunt said:

Thanks, Steve.

Most of the social media failures, in organizations of all types and sizes, can be attributed to a few factors: fad following, jumping on the bandwagon too quickly, emphasizing tactics over strategy... In other words, as you've alluded to, there hasn't been enough emphasis on the need to approach new digital technologies in rational and strategically-oriented ways. That's pretty characteristic of early adopter enthusiasm. Now that the mania is dying down, leaders can start to evaluate and pursue various options in a more reasoned way. We really still are in the beginning stages of the Digital Era...

I am familiar with SCNR and even considered applying for a fellowship last year. My focus is a bit broader than communications, but I am happy to talk about potential synergies. I'll connect with you via LinkedIn so we can move the conversation to a different channel.*

*On second thought, why don't you connect with me? I just spent several minutes trying to find you through various means, but was unsuccessful. Here's my LI profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cshunt312. 

SteveKing1 said:

Courtney:  Thanks for thoughtful comment.  I agree with you and think Twitter is very useful for many tasks.  We use it every day in our business.  And as forecasters, we also think it could become an important platform for most small businesses.

Our concern is the hype around Twitter has way exceeded its current usefulness as a marketing/lead generation platform for the average small business.  In our research we are seeing rapid growth in the number of small businesses who are very disappointed with their social media efforts - especially Twitter. 

We simply want to make sure small businesses understand the current strengths and weaknesses with Twitter prior to investing a lot of time and effort. 

BTW, it sounds like your work is similar to work being done by the Society for New Communications Research (www.sncr.org).  SNCR is a non-profit research group focused on understanding how social media is impacting business and society.  I'm a senior fellow and board member there.  Let me know if you want to discuss SNCR at some point.

Thanks,

Steve

Courtney Hunt said:

Hi Steve.

My point was that I think it's too early to declare the limited usefulness of Twitter. My follow-up sentence - Twitter is effectively a utility, and its story and usefulness are only just starting to be discovered - is key to making my point.

Back in January I edited a News Digest entitled "Growth and Growing Pains of Public Social Media Platforms" that included an article that describes Twitter's early history. Basically, the platform grew beyond the leaders' control, and they lacked strategic direction. Over the past several months, they have been working on taking back ownership and steering the enterprise in a direction of their own choosing (for better or worse). As I noted in my latest post, their emphasis is on evolving Twitter as an information network rather than a social network. If they're successful, and their image as a "serious" channel with substantive content increases, there's virtually no limit to how the technology can be used.

More specifically to your point, there's an opportunity for a multitude of niche networks to form within Twitter. Organizations of all types can use the channel to push out news and pull prospects into their websites. With so many professionals on the go, sending out hooks via Twitter can be an efficient and effective way to reach relevant parties who have opted into communications. Neither the volume nor the character of the tweets would resemble the "nonsense" that celebrities share, but within that small niche those differences are irrelevant.

Perhaps more critically, Twitter can be a powerful listening channel for organizations of all types. I wrote a white paper entitled "Trickle-Up Socialnomics: Leveraging Social Media in the BtoB Context" that provides a conceptual model for understanding how. Using Twitter to listen is a less direct way of reaching/interacting with customers, but it's not necessarily less effective. 

As you noted, people have to stop listening to the hype. But just as they shouldn't thoughtlessly jump on the bandwagon, they shouldn't categorically reject Twitter because of the ways in which it's currently used/abused. We should think creatively about what the underlying technology can do, and how it can help us achieve our goals and objectives.

I hope this helps clarify things. Who woulda thunk that I of all people would be defending Twitter...?

SteveKing1 said:

Courtney:

I need some help.  You say "I can't disagree more with your conclusion that "Twitter is not going to be an effective method for reaching/interacting with customers for a lot of small businesses,""

You're not alone.  I've gotten a ton of feedback like yours, although most of it is not as polite:).

My question is what do you base your view that I'm wrong on?  Twitter is clearly not a mainstream product today.  Reputable surveys have the number of US online users with Twitter accounts at 9%.  But this way overstates usage, because a wide variety of studies show over half of all Twitter accounts are not active. 

So if less than 5% of online Americans (less than 4% of all Americans) use Twitter, how can it be a good marketing medium for the vast majority of small businesses? 

Steve

Courtney Hunt said:

I'm glad to see academics starting to conduct scientific research studies on social media, but it's important to recognize that there are several limitations to this research. First of all, the most current data is over a year old, which in social media time is an eternity ago. In addition, I believe the study focused on link sharing, which excludes a significant portion of Twitter activity.

It's also important to recognize Twitter's own perspective on its platform. They are very clear that they view it as an "information network." They don't deny that it's a form of social media, but they don't see networking as its primary purpose. Many avid Twitter users may disagree, but Twitter's own perspective will be a key part of their strategy going forward.

I can't disagree more with your conclusion that "Twitter is not going to be an effective method for reaching/interacting with customers for a lot of small businesses," especially not based on the results of this research. Twitter is effectively a utility, and its story and usefulness are only just starting to be discovered.

In case you're wondering, I'm not a Twitter fanatic - far from it. I just wrote a related blog post that you and your clients might be interested in. It's called "Unlucky 13? Twitter 'Worst Practices' for Rookies (and Others) to Avoid" and can be accessed via http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsTwitterPost. Based on the feedback I've gotten so far, it seems to have really resonated with people...

Courtney Hunt

Founder - Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community

SteveKing1 said:

Robert:  I've learned there are 3 types of blog posts that pretty much guarantee hate mail:

1.  Anything positive or negative about Obama

2.  Anything positive or negative about the Tea Party

3.  Anything negative about Twitter

So it's nice to get a comment that is not negative on the post:).  

I find Twitter useful in my business and think it's useful for many small businesses.  But the data is very clear.  For most small businesses it is not going to be useful for generating leads and sales - at least not yet.

Steve

RobertBacal said:

Thanks for highlighting this. Billions in time, opportunity cost and money are being wasted on the part of many businesses, large and small because they don't or won't look at the data. The HUGE majority of businesses having attempted to succeed on Twitter have failed at it, and thus their are an immense number of abandoned business accounts. Nobody sees them because nobody looks.

Twitter is fun, and it even has some semi-useful functions but for average businesses, it's DOA.