Social Media: Twitter as Training Wheels - Can All the Goodness of Social Media Be Packed Into One Tool?
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 27, 2008 | Share This
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Today I eavesdropped on a conversation between Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher, I mean Wil Wheaton, and MSNBC’s next generation newscaster Rachel Maddow about podcasts. Apparently they share more than just a hairstyle (see pic). Normally this kind of experience would be bought to me by late night pizza and my overactive dream-state synapses. In this case though I was perfectly awake as it floated down my Twitter stream in between my middle school friend and entertainment PR specialist Ariel’s insights on the music scene in Iceland and former colleague Tom linking to an interview with New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliot.
So wow, the future huh?
If you needed more proof of Twitter’s “it”-site status, look no further than a draft report from US Army Intelligence that warns of Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. In the social media world this is akin to a Bar Mitzvah in our Orange Alert existence – Twitter has come of age. Though before you start looking for that #jihad thread keep in mind that a similar warning was issued about Second Life not so long ago and neither bombs nor Second Life’s popularity have exploded since then.
So how can Twitter be useful from a business perspective? There still aren’t enough users to drive people to your website the way YouTube or Wikipedia can. There is some SEO value in posting but it’s not nearly enough in most cases to give you a sustained high-ranking organic result.The usefulness of the site is still constrained by not incorporating the search and sort features that sister site Summize (now rebranded as search.twitter but still not accessible from the main site) among others has in one easy to access platform.
What Twitter is good for is as a set of training wheel for organizations who want to get a handle on how social media can work but are loath to jump into Facebook and MySpace and YouTube without a sense of what they are doing.
Like Google with search, Twitter’s extreme simplicity exposes all of the threads contained in social networking. You can use it to promote blog posts or video, as a place to interact with customers and press (both mainstream and not), as a blog, as a way of networking with people within your industry or with potential customers. You can even find out about how and what people are saying about you (check out this Summize result for “Chrysler”). That kind of information is incredibly valuable for marketing both on and offline. For instance as a city boy, I never knew until today that my last name was a synonym for hanging out at the mall. Thanks Twitter!
I also think that Twitter’s mobile platform has major potential as more people start using mobile devices online. The Wall Street Journal thinks so to, in an article that I found through a Twitter post by another former Business Wire colleague.
So if you are a marketer, a public relations specialist or even a business development guru and you are having trouble getting your decision makers to invest those precious marketing ducats into social media, start a Twitter account and push the envelope. I’ll bet you can get enough solid examples of how social media can enhance your business goals to get started on the big stuff like direct blog outreach and dedicated optimized company profiles on major sites.
Topics: Blogging, Mobile, MySpace, Podcasting, Social Media, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wireless & Mobile |