As usual, the media has begun its see-sawing articles about
the IPO intentions of Twitter. Either it is an ascending giant or a floundering
service whose potential is as stalled as its user growth.
I realize this type of coverage just is to be expected but,
still, its kind of tiresome. Investors will bet on the leadership or just plain
bet. As for marketers, it’s time to operationalize your Facebook investment (we
know how it works now “scale”) and go into a hefty ‘try and learn’ phase with
Twitter.
A Response to the
Challenges
Challenge:
Ironically, Twitter is well-designed for mobile yet suffers from a dearth of
mobile advertising options and inventory
Response: Really?
Praise and condemn Twitter simultaneously for being too ‘mobile?’ No marketing
platform can be too mobile in 2013. Twitter’s mobile-friendly format is a huge
plus. Just look at the mad growth of WeChat and LINE in Asia (and now Europe). Both are
platforms specifically designed for mobile.
Certainly, Twitter needs better mobile advertising formats.
That is true of the entire mobile space. Just look at Mary Meeker’s comments on
the stage that mobile advertising finds itself. She remains confident that we
are in early days and that mobile ad monetization will happen. Betting against
mobile advertising seems unwise to me.
Challenge: It’s
just a PR platform
Response: More
irony that on the day of the day of the IPO announcement, the New York Times
ran an article about world leaders relying on Twitter to connect with constituents
and to deliver more transparency and access to government via the United Nations. World leaders on
Twitter. That’s powerful.
But critics would say that substantiates Twitter’s role as a PR platform. That’s kind of like saying PR is just PR. The communications
disciplines are all meshing together. None work separately anymore. Advertising
works with PR, direct marketing needs mid-funnel marketing, ecommerce
flourishes because of social and so on. PR, itself ,is valuable as the earned
voice for brands. Combined with other marketing, it drives business and should
not be undervalued.
Sure, Twitter needs a rich set of advertising options to run
a viable business. Those will come. These advertising options will be richer
still because of who is on Twitter (influencers) and the interconnectedness of
Twitter to other marketing functions like …customer care, for example.
Challenge:
Twitter will need to massively grow beyond its 218+million users to become
relevant to advertisers
Response: I doubt
Twitter will reach 1 billion users anytime soon. They could reach 500M. Their
growth has measurably slowed. Still assuming that Twitter, or any platform,
must reach massive scale to be a strong marketing platform is overly
simplistic.
Twitter has a lot of influencers: government leaders,
celebrities, business leaders, sports figures, journalists. It’s a pretty good
crowd. They tweet to their thousands of followers and often sending these
updates automatically into Facebook. Followers retweet and also funnel messages
into the broader reaching Facebook.
Journalists routinely trawl for story ideas through their follower feed.
Twitter should and will grow. At the same time, they should
embrace their influencer-rich nature and put more energy into researching the
role that Twitter plays in the customer journey. Brands need evidence that
Twitter can “sell” in the broadest sense.
Challenge: With
its limited 140 characters, Twitter cannot compete with image-rich services
that are all the rage.
Response:
Twitter’ simplicity is it beauty. In many ways, the limited feature set of
Twitter has driven adoption by marketers who can easily “get” what Twitter can
basically do. Compare that to the mysterious feature set and purpose of
Google+. I guarantee most brands are stumbling through their use of G+ based
upon a rather blind belief that it will help their search rankings…in Google.
I tweet pics all of the time. It may not be as elegant as
the Instagram app but it could be. And Twitter Cards are a great innovation and
one that will build their advertising base. These information panels allow us
to use visuals to advertise and even sell direct.
Twitter plays a valuable role in the marcom mix. I cannot speak to valuations - most are a bit frothy - but we shouldn't simply evaluate Twitter's value based upon today's stories.
(image from: http://www.pillowfightsj.blogspot.com/ )
