In essence: What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter.
Discussions that begin on the platform are more likely to appear elsewhere on the web than they are from any other network. Brands need to begin paying attention to their Twitter Followers as these consumers represent the most influential online users. Brands should be treating Twitter as an entirely different ecosystem of users, rather than directing brand messages on Twitter towards the majority of their consumers.
Active Twitter users count themselves as those who actually want to influence others. In fact, 73% of Twitter users have said that it is their goal on the platform to accumulate larger audiences, and are incredibly selective about who they choose to follow.
Twitter’s power to influence extends beyond the actual service.
Of course, Twitter isn’t for everyone — not every consumer (especially new adopters) can handle the overwhelming surge of incoming real-time information on the platform. Luckily, you don’t actually have to use Twitter to know what’s happening on Twitter.
Twitter’s extremely flexible API allows third parties to easily build applications on top of its infrastructure. Also, tweets can be read by absolutely anyone — you don’t need to create an account to read a tweet. This means that while only a fraction of users are actually reading tweets on Twitter itself, the platform is still able to effectively double its reach.
Followers aren’t the only ones listening to your brand on Twitter.
Search engines are listening as well.
Since search engines like Google or Bing are able to index your individual tweets, consumers will be able to find your previous updates during their own queries. What this means is what brands post from their Twitter account will effectively represent them for the remainder of Internet history and most likely will be found by those who are either watching for or stumbling onto them.
So how exactly should brands be interacting with their followers on Twitter? The beauty of the platform is that there is absolutely no right way to go about doing this. Twitter is a place for personality — a place to help give brands a voice — where users don’t expect every single company to interact with them in any specific way (except respectfully, of course). This provides ample opportunity for more creative ways to engage consumers.
For those brands who do need a bit of help, however, Exact Target recommends reading the case studies of other companies that have successfully used Twitter as a marketing device.
Twitter users appreciate the important stuff your brand has to say.
While some consumers might turn to Facebook for more in depth discussion, most agree that Twitter facilitates quick and concise communication due to its 140 character limit. The amazing thing about Twitter is that it forces us to shrink down all of the nonsense we want to say about ourselves and present it in a single shot. It’s like a resume — you want to cut out the “fluff” and only offer the most relevant information to your target audience.
In this way, consumers understand that they are only getting the most important and critical information from brands or those they choose to follow on the platform. This, of course, means that brands need to find a way to embrace their voice on the service in a manner that quickly and effectively communicates the message they want to deliver.
The brevity of the platform isn’t the only thing that keeps followers tuned into what brands want to say — it’s also the fact that Twitter is both game, add-on, and advertisement free. By cutting out all of the distractions that we normally see while using any other channel, Twitter effectively narrows the focus for users only looking to find information. This means that whatever they are using Twitter for (whether it’s to receive news updates or interact with brands) gets their complete attention.
Twitter users aren’t just following brands for news or product updates.
Consumers that seek out brands on Twitter are looking for perspectives from those companies that they won’t be able to find anywhere else. The level of accessibility of a brand or celebrity as well as their tendency to interact with followers often determines how successful that company or person will be in terms of making a meaningful impact on consumers.
For example, an angry consumer is more likely to Tweet about a failed experience with a company than they are to dial in their aggression as, oftentimes, they feel that the company will have more of a tendency to react (especially since the service is real-time).
Also due to the real-time nature of Twitter is the tendency for consumers to follow brands because they are looking for current promotions, special deals and coupons. Exact Target recommends engaging brand users with real time contests or giveaways, as Twitter followers tend to enjoy the entertaining aspect of these types of promotions.
The bottom line
Twitter, whether you like it or not, is a communication channel unique in and of itself. Understanding how to integrate the service into your marketing strategy can have a huge effect on the long term success of your company or brand, and it is important that you are aware of the differences between marketing to users on Twitter and reaching out to consumers on social networks.
Twitter users are blogger, vloggers, community members and active online participants in Internet culture. They are collaborators and contributors who need to be treated as such if a brand hopes to excel on Twitter’s unique channel. Take a moment to comprehend what exactly it is that your consumers want from you on the platform, and how to deliver that to them in a way that is uniquely capable of being amplified across all channels.
