Oh, I can already feel it - this article will not get me the popularity vote. As a marketing columnist it's my job to tell you how good social media marketing is and how well it works and over the last year I've done that. However, with that being said just like in all things marketing what works and what doesn't is constantly changing. Twitter is no different.
I've written a social media marketing course as well as a Twitter course and I do believe that for some businesses it can work, for others it becomes a time suck and takes away from other methods of marketing that would bring in more profitable results.
Just take into consideration a study done by Nielsen in June of 2010. Consumers spend a monthly average of
4 hrs 39 minutes 33 seconds on Facebook
31 minutes 17 seconds on Twitter
This brings me to the point of this article. I believe that Twitter is losing its effectiveness. It's always been a tough medium to use and while more people seem to be adopting Twitter they tend to get tired of it quickly. Now, I've looked for a study to prove this and unfortunately could not find one, so I've based this article on my conversations with colleagues, consumers and marketers within the last few months.
I believe that there are 5 things wrong with Twitter when it comes to using it as a marketing tool and I'm going to share them with you.
- It's time-consuming. The majority people on Twitter with large amounts of following spend hours not minutes engaging in those relationships. While that sounds easy for the average person working in a daily job that is not social media focused it's a tough act to follow.
- The attention span of those signing up for Twitter continues to dwindle and retention of users seems to be suffering. A different report by Nielsen showed that 60% of users quit within the first month.
- The average consumer doesn't understand how to use it as a tool and therefore becomes frustrated. Without tutorials and someone to guide it's a land that's easy to get lost in.
- The majority of those on Twitter are marketers, so unless you want to market to marketers you may be better off spending your time elsewhere. This is why you'll see a lot of success with B2B business on Twitter.
- It's a very noisy place to be with typically 1 out of 10 Tweets containing no marketing message or links. That's a lot of messages to cipher through to find anything of value. Again, who has the time?
The one thing that I think Twitter can help companies with is being used to provide customer service and support to customers that are looking for you on Twitter. This can be easily done using alerts and Twitter search tools.
Keep in mind that Twitter can work for some companies, but I'm finding the Twitter success stories are becoming harder to find. I also realize that not everyone will agree with me and with that being said I'm happy to hear the opposing opinion, however I do ask that if you disagree and you are a marketer that sells Twitter services that you be willing to disclose that. Your chances of swaying me will be increased by case studies, reports and recent marketing data.
Let the debate begin. How do you feel about Twitter - love it or hate it?