SNEAKY TRICK TO GET

MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS!

HOW TO USE TWEET DECK?

HOW TO USE TWITTER:

Ken Freeman reviews a new post on MediaPost's  The Social Graf

According to "Guess Who Doesn't Tweet: Almost Everyone" by Erik Sass, "Twitter has grabbed the imagination of a sizeable subset of professional Americans, and it has garnered a huge level of name recognition in the U.S. population, with 87% of respondents to a recent Arbitron-Edison Research study saying they were aware of the site. But the number of Americans who use Twitter at least once a month remains relatively small, at 17 million, or about 7% of the total. Separate figures from Nielsen and ComScore suggest the site has been attracting an average 20-22 million unique visitors in the U.S. in the first months of 2010."

Certainly, you are going to hear social media specialists touting the need for Twitter, but is Twitter a truly "marketing tool" is yet to be seen. Looking at the trend lines, it would seem that compared to Facebook, Twitter is attracting to its site, about 17 million where Facebook is adding an average unique 20 million users every day.

According to actual stats from both ComScore and Nielsen, His report shows that "Facebook grew pretty gradually from about 15 million unique visitors in the U.S. in June 2006 to about 20 million in October 2007; it then began growing much more rapidly, hitting 35 million uniques in December 2007, 55 million by December 2008, and over 100 million in December 2009. In January of this year, Nielsen and ComScore both said Facebook attracted about 115 million unique visitors in the U.S. By contrast, Erik indicated that "Twitter's period of rapid growth came early -- but also appears to have ended early. From 500,000 users in January 2008, it doubled to one million by March 2008, then again to two million by June 2008, four million by December 2008, 9.3 million by March 2009, and 23 million by June 2009. And that's where it stalled: in the nine months which followed, Twitter has hovered around the 20 million mark in the U.S., while Facebook added about that many new uniques per month. And it's worth remembering that Facebook was originally limited to members with college email addresses, before opening itself to the great unwashed masses; Twitter has never operated under such a constraint."

Thus, it is clear that something is stalling or blocking further expansion of Twitter into the mainstream. Erik's report quotes Arbitron-Edison's vice-president for strategy and marketing, Tom Webster, who summed up the problem: "Twitter has yet to articulate its value to mainstream Americans." I agree.  Let's look at the chart below. Make up your own mind about Twitter.

I agree with Erik's assumption that it's easy enough to see the appeal of Facebook.  He says, "The concept of the self-constructed profile corresponds pretty well to most people's sense of ego: by selectively presenting information, you can craft a flattering, consistent self-portrait to present to other people. While tweets are also selectively created and presented to individual advantage, each tweet and even a whole history of tweets is less about presenting a complete identity -- indeed, it's less of a "profile" and more of an "account," meaning a narrative of yourself encountering, interacting, becoming."

It's worth noting however, that the Arbitron-Edison study Erik reported about found 70% of Twitter users frequently update their status, versus 55% of users for other social networks.

He said, "At the same time, Twitter's progress resembles the first wave of blogs a few years ago: millions of people signed up, but most of these accounts soon lapse or go dormant because (I would venture) they discovered they don't have anything they feel is worth posting on a day-to-day basis -- let alone moment to moment." However, on the flip side, Twitter has allowed for important news and self-expression to flow faster than any other form of news media both old and new. Remember the plane that crashed into the Potomac River?

Someone on the plane sent a tweet about the plan about the crash before the news every reported it.

How about when the Iranian riots took place. The government blocked all internet, so the people of Iran used their cell phones and proxie servers in Europe to tweet about what was really going on and the world watched, even the news media who were blocked took their news from Twitter. While there is much speculation about the value of Twitter, I for one, believe Twitter serves a purpose for instant communication and conversation. Will it ever be an advertising mainstay? I have my doubts, but as a medium for self-expression and corporate-expression, I believe it is here to stay.

AWS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC said "While Facebook has a significant higher number of users, Twitter does play an important function for business. Facebook is about building a community of friends and fans. Facebook is about continuity, private messaging and sharing comments back and forth. Twitter is and always has been an instant conversation!   Businesses can use Twitter to measure customer feedback, use polls, distribute coupons and much more. You can use Twitter to manage your business reputation. Because your tweets can contain a link, you should aways offer teasers as your tweet to draw people back to your website.  We reccomend Twitter to all our business clients."

OriginalSource: Mediapost.com

AWS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC is a full service digitial media agency providing social media and web design, copywriting and blog editing along with full web creation, print, and audio, video media production based in Garland, TX serving Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego and New York City.