Still not twittering...?

Twitter, (and other social media are doing) are changing all the rules of advertising and marketing. This is going on under our noses, and we’re now in the era of conversational marketing. You hadn’t noticed ? Prepare yourself because this is a huge shift in the way things work, and the implications are massive for all of us !

The internet and social media have changed the way we discuss corporate brands and reputations. Yelp allows us to rate and review local businesses we frequent, Facebook allows us to connect with friends and family and share our interests and our shoe addictions, and Twitter is the destination for any shred of emotion we want to share with our network !

Consumers are figuring out that they get better information and support from being networked to each other than to companies. In short they turn to each other for advice.

The good news for businesses is that we are apparently allowed into their conversations. More and more companies are building MySpace pages, launching facebook profiles or setting up Twitter accounts for customer support. They are finding that the corporate voice of “we have something to tell you” doesn’t work on these mediums, instead a new conversational marketing language is what works on the new media.

A recent survey of Twitterers, asked about their top reasons for using the platform stated the top two as:

• I find it exciting to learn new things from people
• I value getting information in a timely manner

Having lots of people follow them was not a high priority for them.

So, from a consumer’s viewpoint, the new social media redress the balance between consumer and faceless large company, or even faceless small company. Retailers are using Twitter to engage with customers, both for customer service issues and to get feedback and dialogue with customers – almost a market research perspective. Not, interestingly enough – for selling, or at least not exclusively.

Seth Godin, the world famous marketer said that marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make, do or create – stories that sell and more importantly today perhaps in our virtual world – stories that spread !

From a business or marketers perspective, engaging in Twitter allows you to be in the loop and also to hear what is being said about you and your brand, which gives you an opportunity either to learn from what you hear or to respond. If someone was bad mouthing your business wouldn’t you want to be able to defend yourself?

Aside from information and protecting a brand, Twitter also allows you to build a following that you can tweet to - letting them know about your business, your personality and what you have going on…. for free - in effect its free advertising, all it costs is your time and you can join the conversation !

If you are finding your tweets a bit much to handle, check out tweet deck, it’ll manage them for you and enable you to keep chirruping !