Building on Sharon Sarmiento's post on the 901am Blog, "The Top 5 Ways Smart People Are Using Twitter," here are some digital marketing implications for platform-independent, networked microblogs:
Advertising and marketing communications
The operative word here is "dialogue," where the form gives life to continued conversations and engagement over time. At Real Branding, we define the advertising role of any medium to Introduce, Engage/Dialogue and Remind. While Twitter doesn't have broadcast-like impact or broad enough penetration yet to widely introduce in the way most large marketers consider effective, it can be easily applied to extend the advertising effect. Dialogue is where Twitter lives.
- For entertainment, consumer package goods, consumer electronics and B2B technology new product releases, as well as highly considered and affiliated categories, expect "Nano-Releases" by Twitter that tickle The Long Tail and maintain interest building to a trial, consideration, engagement or purchase event. See the Fox Twitter for "Drive" as an example of fan-based engagement with their show, and then with the broader community around shared interests.
- For personality-driven and beloved brands, look for wit, wisdom, clues and insider info delivered to the deserving (See Colbert's and Borat's twitters).
- For live sports and entertainment event marketing, expect the Twitter to get you front-row. Currently, you can get stats, scores and news from NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL teams pushed to you in real time. There's your Sunday ticket. For multi-venue music and film events like the New Orleans Jazz Fest or the Tribeca Film Festival, imagine quickly sharing the experience from your venue to your friends' devices next door, across town or even around the world.
- For promotional programs, Twitter can deliver clues, locations, events, program updates and other gambits in richer ways that better account for how consumers are connecting.
- For crisis management, think about having a Twitter deployment strategy to address breaking events between the news cycles. We would recommend having your Twitter available before it's needed, which brings up another implication.
- Domain/brand claims. As with your domain names a decade or so ago, and MySpace pages more recently, friends and foes are already starting to "squat" on your most intuitive name. Go forth and register your brands even if it precedes a communications strategy.
Publishing
As you may imagine, bloggers are the fastest publishing group to adopt microblogging; we've got a list of formidable participants in the last section, people to watch on Twitter.
Notable entrants outside of the blogosphere:
Traditional publishers
New media publishers
Match-making
Back in the early 1990s at Omnicom, we came up with the idea for a career portal and launched the first one with Career Mosaic. The premise was based on a simple media dynamic: We noticed that the internet -- at the time, mostly newsgroups, FTP and gopher sites -- was primarily organized through the lenses of love (and every variation on the theme), money (with Classifieds being the biggest draw) and hobbies. Expect love, money and hobbies to be connected in short-form and less formal ways through Twitter. More connections before an in-person meeting could develop greater trust, familiarity and confidence.
- Winners here will be people practiced in the art of the sustained short-schmooze. In fact, this could really change that art, and could put a higher demand on substance.
- Think networking on steroids.
- Consider it a friends & family rollcall and alert system.
- For interdependent, interdisciplinary teams, this could be a killer client, teams and project communication tool ("alpha version on the staging servers!").
- Proceed with caution: it seems like an Artificial Intelligence engine can fake a Twitter session/persona pretty easily (similar to what we created for HBO with Da Ali G bot).
Faster, stronger, better truths and transparency
Anyone who got the flu last year knows how good new strains are at beating our defenses. It's the same with these evolving platforms. Twitter will challenge the PR and corporate communications groups in ways that will make blogs look like warm-ups.
- If you've got a closed work culture, consider it open. WIRED is covering the clash at Microsoft between its open developer's blog, Channel 9, and a culture that values secrecy as competitive advantage and survival.
- The Transparent CEO Story by Wired about Glenn Kelman of Redfin.
The next noise you'll hear around Twitter/microblogging could be a demolition of old ways of communications and brand management. Expect a wall of corporate secrecy to tumble one chip/Flickr Shot/YouTube video/Twitter at a time.