Luke Brown Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

The Global Language Monitor recently announced that ‘Twitter’ was the top word of 2009. Stories about Twitter are on news sources of all kinds. Twitter has been called everything from the 8th wonder of the world to something that will profoundly change humanity.

Come on, people. Take off the blinders, disregard the lemmings, and grab a cold shower of reality. Twitter is hype, a fad, an in-your-face has-been. In a year of overkill – Michael Jackson’s death, Balloon Boy and his idiot parents, and Tiger Woods’ appetite for off-menu entrees – Twitter takes the Overkill Prize of 2009.

That’s not to say Twitter doesn’t have value, because it does. That Google now includes tweets in real time searches shows the power of Twitter. But recent numbers point to a decline in Twitter’s actual website visitors and, more importantly, a decline in new users.

Matthew Daines, the lead developer of Twellow (Twitter Yellow Pages), shared a couple new graphs for November. The number of new users declined for the fourth consecutive month and is now down 24.4% from the July, 2009 high.

While the number of new users continued to decline, the number of tweets per user continued to rise. This could indicate several aspects:

• those who have found success on Twitter are devoting more time to it
• spammers are having a field day
• those who found Twitter useless for their business were not tweeting often

It’s still too early to determine which is a cause and which is an effect. Twitter saw many changes in November and change makes people uncomfortable, so it’s very possible the numbers just reflect a temporary disconnect. Here are just some of the November changes:

• The new retweet feature was introduced
• The “What are you doing?” question was changed to “What’s Happening?” for updates
• It implemented a partnership with LinkedIn so tweets show up on LinkedIn

Twitter has a paid service planned for the near future though that is no guarantee that it can make money or that its business model is profitable or sustainable. Business people should be familiar with Twitter in case it does turn into a valuable tool. At this time, however, it doesn’t seem prudent to invest too much time, money or effort into something which is profitable for so few people.

Twitter exploded into the public’s eye this year, with the type of hypergrowth that makes for superb news headlines. The lack of a sustainable business model didn’t seem to be a detriment to investors who poured over $100 million into the company. The good news associated with the company may be over.

A recent article on emarketer.com shows traffic declining on Twitter from 2.1% to an eye-popping 27.8%. Why? The reasons are varied and may not be as bleak as first imagined.

Twitter’s growth has been tremendous, but 60% of users only stayed for two months before becoming inactive. Recent studies showed 80% of Tweets to be self-referential (as mentioned in the blog post about mono media).

The article does mention legitimate reasons for the drop in traffic which must be considered, especially given the huge disparity in the numbers. Since many Twitter users use third party apps like HootSuite and TweetDeck, it’s difficult to correlate traffic and users.

Social media sites can generate traffic, leads and sales if a proper strategy is implemented. There are many strategies which work, some of which are the opposite of others. You can also establish an authority presence if you desire on social media sites.

Define Your Persona, Then Pick Your Site

Different social media sites appeal to different demographics. Understanding your persona and how it fits in with a site will improve the benefit you’ll get. Pick the wrong site, however, and your social media time investment will return minimal results.

Persona: Professional and business-oriented. LinkedIn appeals to employed professionals and entrepreneurs. Demographics show strong appeal in the 35-50 age range, and users tend to be well-educated and affluent. Thousands of groups are available for networking with those who share your passions. The Questions area is very helpful across a wide range of topics.

Persona: Family and Friends are a priority. You can’t go wrong with Facebook, now a profitable company with over 400 million users worldwide. Facebook is now the second most visited internet site (after Google). There isn’t much new to say about Facebook. If you still haven’t signed up, well, beware. It can be very addictive.

Persona: Freewheeling, entrepreneurial, tech-savvy. You just might find a home at Twitter. Take the time to learn the ins and outs before tweeting (posting) and define what you want before going all in.

There are plenty of other social media sites available if the Big Three don’t float your boat. LinkedIn and Facebook look like they’re here for good. I still have reservations about Twitter. In six months, anything could change significantly. That’s the beauty of the change of pace on the internet. Stability isn’t synonymous with the web.

As always, your comments are welcomed and appreciated.