To twitter or not to twitter

Words like twitter, tweet and follower become more and more integrated in our language. The word ‘twitteren’ was even chosen as the word of 2009 in the Netherlands. Tweets appear in newspapers, and twitter is used for politics and marketing too. However, twitter is not often used for marketing. Research shows that only forty-two companies of the ‘big’ companies in the Netherlands make use of twitter. Why does only the minority of the companies use twitter, while Twitter is still growing?

They do, or they don’t
One reason companies do not use twitter, is that a lot of companies are researching what their opportunities are with this new media. They want to use twitter in a right and appropriate way.
Some companies already know what the desires of the customers are. Marketing is about fulfilling the customer desires. If there is a desire of customers to find answers or information on twitter, the company will provide these online.
First of all, despite of the fact companies have a twitter account or not, people are talking about their brand. It is a good idea to create a twitter account, to prevent abuse of your brand name. Twitter is a free ‘country’ and you do not have to identify to create an account.
Furthermore, it is important for businesses to be online. They will know when positive or negative information will appear online and they can try to control this information. In the case of negative information they can’t prevent this, but can limit damage by taking action. Twitter is the perfect place to start a discussion about your brand or product.

Good twitter use
Compared to other (social) media, twitter is free and easy to use. The minority of the businesses has realised that it is important to be online. UPC started a webcare team in 2006 who is responsible for twitter and other social media. If customers are online, UPC will be online too. Twitter is used for answering questions and arranging complaints. The customers accept the presence of UPC on twitter, because they give personal and fast answers. ING uses twitter for daily problems and questions too, but for ING is twitter the biggest communication channel of the webcare team. Research of this team showed their target group can be found on twitter. De Postcode Loterij (Dutch Lottery, where you can win large amounts of money) uses twitter to answer questions, but also to communicate with lottery winners. When the winner of the ‘kanjer’ (a lot of money) is announced, the ‘postcode loterij’ gets more followers every moment.

Remarkable is the fact that these companies use Twitter next to their normal marketing program, instead for commercial activities. That there will be a lot of unexplored opportunities for twitter, will be clear now. Companies should continue researching their chances and keep looking for new possibilities. Some people say twitter is temporary, while others learn more and more about this new media and call themselves twitter experts. We do not know what the future will bring us, but for now I will use twitter and should recommend businesses to do this too.

Source: Tijdschrift voor marketing