Relevance of Twitter in Marketing Campaigns - Essay Example

Relevance of Twitter in Marketing Campaigns Name: Lecturer: Course: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Compelling problem statement 3 Product Overview 4 History 4 Market penetrations and major competitors 4 Solution to the problem 6 Standard features and tools 7 Risks and Weaknesses 9 Security considerations 10 URL redirection 10 Twishing and monitoring of brands 10 Ethical Considerations 11 Opportunities to leverage mobile platforms 11 Features and enhancements 12 New features 12 Features under design 12 Recommended features 13 Conclusion 13 Reference 14 Introduction Twitter is a microblogging service and social networking site that allows users to send and receive 14- character messages in real-time. Unlike unregistered users, registered ones are able to post and read tweets (the messages). This whitepaper highlights the basic features and principles for marketing businesses or products on Twitter. Compelling problem statement An underlying problem in marketing is identifying target communities or people who identify with a product, followers or a brand or organisation. Another key concern in marketing remains building trust and long-term relationships with customers. A problem also arises in matters that concern creating marketing content that relates well with the needs of specific target markets. Additionally, companies look to expand their reach by pushing out content that appeal to a wide range of customers. Businesses also need to achieve effective monitoring of their market segment. This is in the area of getting real-time statistics on who clicks their tweeted links as well as locations of its audience. Lastly, businesses want to know whether their brands are appreciated through measuring discussions and re-tweets on Twitter surrounding a certain topic. Product Overview History Twitter microblogging site was developed in March 2006 and launched in July 2006 by four friends: Noah Glass, Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey. The four launched a startup company that became successful through the ears in terms of cultural impact, revenue growth and capitalisation of market. Its origin is traced to brainstorming sessions by the four, who were then members of the board at Odeo Inc, a podcasting company (Johnson, 2013). The original idea was to create an SMS service that could be used to communicate with a small group. The first Twitter message was published by Dorsey in March 21, 2006. It was then used as an internal networking service by employees at Odeo, before a full version was introduced to the public in July 2006 and in April 2007, was launched into a company -- Twitter Inc – in San Franscisco, California (Johnson, 2013). The company has since grown tremendously from 400,000 tweets that were posted each successive quarter in the year of its launch to 100 million in 2008. Twitter quickly rose through the ranks of most popular social networking sites (SNS) to become the third in 2011 from twenty-second in 2009. The microblogging site has since grown to become one of the most popular social media with some 200 million active users as of 2012. By end of 2013, Twitter Inc’s statistics showed that some 200 million Twitter users sent an excess of 400 million tweets each day. Over 60 percent were sent from mobile device (Johnson, 2013). Market penetrations and major competitors Recent studies indicate that Twitter’s market penetration is 22%, compared to its main competitors in the social networking site segment such as Facebook’s 55% market share, Instgram’s 21% ad Snapchat 13% (Bennet, 2013). Figure 1: Top social networking sites 2013 statistics (Bennet, 2013). Analysis of the share of visits based on its competitors shows that Twitter is the third most visited social media platform at about 1.7, after Facebook at around 57.1 percent and YouTube at 24.8 percent (Fig 2). Figure 2: Share of SNS visits in 2013 (Kallas, 2013). For the purpose of this white paper, Twitter’s growth and penetration is compared to that of Facebook (Kallas, 2013). The United States has the biggest number of Twitter users followed by UK, which has 6.3% of the users, representing15 million users as of 2013. Facebook has 5 times more users compared to the 200 million users of Twitter. Additionally, Twitter Inc’s revenue for 2013 was $665 million, showing a 110% increase from $316 million in 2012. On the other hand, Facebook’s revenue grew by 55% to reach $7.8 billion in 2012 (Kallas, 2013). Additionally, while Facebook’s mobile usage is estimated at 77% in 2013, compared to 64 percent in 2012, Twitter’s is estimated at 76 percent, compared to 72 percent in the previous year (Blue Fountain Media, n.d.). Solution to the problem Twitter statistics show that the social networking site is primarily for businesses and people. In spite of being a professional and marketing networking tool, it is chiefly a consumer-dominated media rather than supplier- or producer-dominated. Studies show that some 90 percent of the tweets originate from consumers, with a mere 12 percent mentioning a brand. These findings suggest that Twitter can help businesses to achieve their objectives of increasing engagement with consumers for a certain purpose (SkyNews.com, 2013). This also shows that although Twitter is not a one-size-fits-all set of solutions, marketers can tap its full potential to interact directly with customers. Identifying target communities or people who identify with a product and its followers: Twitter can identify specific target communities or market segments to a business or product and engaging them in real-time. Twitter plays a critical role in ensuring this form of interaction as it enables brands to extend and respond to followers of a product. Studies show that the surge in modern day consumer interest has inspired brands to create Twitter accounts. Building trust with customers: On analysis of the Twitter platform, it has no delimitations between users on this social media platform, which makes it a proper tool for building trust and relationships with customers. Creating marketing content that resonates well with the target market. A brand has the potential to extend its reach organically by creating content on its Twitter account that resonates well with the target market. Studies have established that a vast amount of search engine marketers use Twitter for communication purposes, sharing best practices and searching for news feeds and reviews that would enable them to earn a competitive edge. Assessing customer reviews: Twitter gives consumers a voice. It hence becomes a critical tool for listening and assessing consumer reviews. Statistics on consumers who use Twitter shows that 94 percent of the tweets are personal, self-promotional or professional. Building relationship with customers: Twitter opens opportunity for companies to talk directly to customers. Studies show that businesses have a tendency to talk at customers rather than with them, which makes for limited opportunity for markers to be part of conversation. For instance, while brands may use advertising to pass a message to customers, they may fail to leverage the opportunities to connect in a more trusting manner to the consumers in a two-way communication. However, Twitter has opened up new opportunities by giving business vast means to engage in two-way communications. Statistics show that some 43 percent of tweets are conversation with some 12 percent representing market tweets that signify interactive dialogue. Standard features and tools Twitter has several unique features that make it an effective, reliable, secure and generic marketing tool. These include Verified Accounts, Twitter Lists, Location Feature, Trending Topics and Promoted Accounts, Tweets and Trends. Verified Accounts comprise of a unique Twitter feature used in preventing fake user profiles, as well as identifying the official or genuine brands or businesses. Using this feature, Twitter actively determines the brand it should select to verify. Additionally, the feature rejects any user verification requests (Blue Fountain Media, n.d.). Figure 3: Blue tick mark in the figure shows the account is verified Twitter Lists This feature enables the Twitter users to section out followers into lists based on specific themes. The feature offers a great way to organize marketing content into pertinent themes to prevent information clutter and to focus on the significant goals of the marketing campaign. Location Feature This feature allows user of Twitter to incorporate their location with their Tweets. In cases where the exact locations are permitted, a map with a pin indicating where the Tweet occurred is displayed. It offers a means to inform users or a company’s location as well as make the Twitter feed increasingly engaging. Trending Topics This feature comprises a listing of the most popular topics that are being discussed by users of Twitter. It is a valuable to scan most popular brands and know whether the brands are “trending”. It also offers customer opportunities to join discussions on brands (Blue Fountain Media, n.d.). Promoted Accounts, Tweets and Trends These features make up Twitter’s advertising platform. Unlike regular Tweets, promoted Tweets are paid for. They are also promoted in users’ feeds. They are distinguishable by a “promoted” label. They are effective for big brands with rich marketing content. Promoted Trends and Tweets are also paid for (Blue Fountain Media, n.d.). 1. Risks and Weaknesses Using Twitter is time consuming if it has to work effectively. Averagely, it requires a minimum of between 6 and 8 hours of frequent tweeting, which may take much of a company’s time. Companies can use social media to concentrate on blogging (Lister, 2013). Underlying risk of negative comments may affect a company’s reputation especially if ignored. Companies should regularly tweet to explain any discrepancies and to dispel any rumors. Any relationship with those representing company’s on Twitter should be clarified (Holmes, n.d.). Lack of short term return on investment before the campaign begins to show improved customer service or sales. Businesses should come up with great content that engage customers (Lister, 2013). Risks of infringing intellectual property or privacy rights by publishing content of others on Twitter exist. Social media managers or writers should come up with unique content. A key weakness is that it is difficult to target particular audience with certain interests since those who select to follow a business or brand are self-selective and will only see the message once retweeted (Lister, 2013). Security considerations The security considerations of using Twitter mainly include how brands take the responsibility to protect customers. Two security considerations include Twishing and Monitoring of brand and URL redirection (Leggio, 2009). URL redirection Handling the security of URL direction is a major security concern. The security issues involved include taking precautions not to click on unrecognised or untrusted URLs. However, to combat this security concern, Twitter has a policy, which states that if the URL has more than 40 characters, they will turn automatically into a TinyURL (Jacobsen, 2012). Twishing and monitoring of brands Twishing, or Twitter Phishing, is a security concern where “fake direct messages” are sent to notify some users and direct them to bogus Twitter-type URL just to steal user credentials. This may result to large-scale scams (Leggio, 2009). Ethical Considerations Nearly all ethical issues on Twitter can be summarised into two, namely transparency and information disclosure. Information disclosure is a code of ethics concerned with using Twitter to perform unethical ghost writing or tweeting similar types of incentives. Other considerations include avoiding disclosure or unnecessary story or anything that entails out-of-context communication (Baker, 2011). Twitter also promotes transparency while using the platform to promote trust among users. Companies using this platform must use transparent, continuous and in some cases transparent communication (Cain & Fink, 2012). Opportunities to leverage mobile platforms Mobile platforms are fast becoming a place that customers and businesses or brands can connect and conduct businesses. They also get to use content to determine the value of products. Mobile content strategies can be used to produce high quality marketing content that companies can pass through Twitter. Mobile content can particularly be formatted and written for mobile consumption. Twitter has mobile application that can be considered as mobile content. Mobile applications can be used by businesses to create interactive and engaging mobile applications as well as draft content for pertinent platforms. Business can also capitalise on mobile platforms through Twitter for live tweeting campaigns in business to business communication. Features and enhancements New features Twitter has recently introduced certain features to enhance marketing campaigns. These include: Targeting of keywords in timelines that allows advertisers to reach out to users depending on keywords in recent tweets (Twitter, 2013). Feature for mobile platforms, such as Windows Phone, have also been introduced. These include getting tweets on lock screens, mobile notifications and quick access search (Wu, 2013). Features under design Photo-focused optimisation features are currently under development for Android and iOS apps that allows users to reply to a tweet with a photo by tapping at the gallery (Soltys, 2014). Recommended tweets display feature can be used to surface trending or new content that users may miss out. Although these features are already in use, they are still under development, as of February 2014 (Circa, 2014). Recommended features Twitter should be able to promote viral platform, develop advertising platform as well as develop connect API. A survey shows that these are the key features that have made Facebook to be a more superior marketing tool (Smith, 2013). Twitter should be able to give its users a platform to converse about products or brands in a seamless way. Followers should be able to see a comment posted by a follower of a business page or even “like”. Twitter should also allow businesses to develop pay-per-click ads on Twitter to promote their brands. Twitter should also allow web developer to expand their websites into a Twitter platform through a single sign-on. Conclusion Twitter is primarily for businesses and people. In spite of being a professional and marketing networking tool, it is chiefly a consumer-dominated media that can help businesses to achieve their objectives of interacting and engaging with customers to achieve increased sales, build relationships, build trust, reputation and increase revenue base. Twitter can identify specific target communities or market segments to a business or product and engaging them in real-time. Twitter plays a critical role in ensuring this form of interaction as it enables brands to extend and respond to followers of a product. A business has the potential to extend its reach organically by creating content on its Twitter account to resonate well with the target market. Twitter is a critical tool for listening and assessing consumer reviews. In addition, it opens opportunity for businesses to talk directly to customers or engage in two-way communications in real time. In this way, customer expectations and demands can be met. Reference Baker, A. (2011). Ethical considerations in web 2.0 archives. Student Research Journal, 1(1), 1-12 Bennet, S. (2013). Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Snapchat, viewed 27 Feb 2014, http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/teens-social-media_b50664 Blue Fountain Media (n.d.). Marketing with Twitter 101. Retrieved: Cain, J. & Fink, J. (2012). Legal and Ethical Issues Regarding Social Media and Pharmacy Education. Am J Pharm Educ 74(10): 184. Clarke, M. (2013). Why Twitter May Fail. Retrieved from Liberty Voice website: Circa (2014). Twitter inserting recommended tweets at top of empty timelines. Retrieved: Holmes, W. (n.d.). Crisis Communications and Social Media: Advantages, Disadvantages and Best Practices. retrieved: Jacobsen, J. (2012). Social Media: 5 Legal Risks to Your Company. Practical Ecommerce. Retrieved: Johnson, M. (2013). The History of Twitter. Socialnomics. retrieved: Kallas, P. (2013). Top 10 Social Networking Sites by Market Share of Visits [June 2013]. Retrieved from DreamGrow website: Leggio, J. (2009). Security considerations for brands using Twitter. retrieved from Zdnet: Lister, L. (2013). The Disadvantages of Twitter. Retrieved from Azcentral.com: Livingstone, S. & Brake, R. (2010) On the rapid rise of social networking sites: new findings and policy implications. Children & society, 24 (1). pp. 75-83 SkyNews.com (2013). Twitter Shares Plummet 23% On Market Opening. Retrieved: Smith, W. (2013). 5 reasons Facebook is better than Twitter for your business. Retrieved from Examiner.com: Soltys, D. (2014). Twitter adds recommended tweets and improved photo features for iOS and Android. retrieved: Twitter (2013). Introducing Keyword Targeting in Timelines. Retrieved: Wu, C. (2013). New features on Twitter for Windows Phone 3.0. retrieved: Read More

For the purpose of this white paper, Twitter’s growth and penetration is compared to that of Facebook (Kallas, 2013). The United States has the biggest number of Twitter users followed by UK, which has 6.3% of the users, representing15 million users as of 2013. Facebook has 5 times more users compared to the 200 million users of Twitter. Additionally, Twitter Inc’s revenue for 2013 was $665 million, showing a 110% increase from $316 million in 2012. On the other hand, Facebook’s revenue grew by 55% to reach $7.

8 billion in 2012 (Kallas, 2013). Additionally, while Facebook’s mobile usage is estimated at 77% in 2013, compared to 64 percent in 2012, Twitter’s is estimated at 76 percent, compared to 72 percent in the previous year (Blue Fountain Media, n.d.). Solution to the problem Twitter statistics show that the social networking site is primarily for businesses and people. In spite of being a professional and marketing networking tool, it is chiefly a consumer-dominated media rather than supplier- or producer-dominated.

Studies show that some 90 percent of the tweets originate from consumers, with a mere 12 percent mentioning a brand. These findings suggest that Twitter can help businesses to achieve their objectives of increasing engagement with consumers for a certain purpose (SkyNews.com, 2013). This also shows that although Twitter is not a one-size-fits-all set of solutions, marketers can tap its full potential to interact directly with customers. Identifying target communities or people who identify with a product and its followers: Twitter can identify specific target communities or market segments to a business or product and engaging them in real-time.

Twitter plays a critical role in ensuring this form of interaction as it enables brands to extend and respond to followers of a product. Studies show that the surge in modern day consumer interest has inspired brands to create Twitter accounts. Building trust with customers: On analysis of the Twitter platform, it has no delimitations between users on this social media platform, which makes it a proper tool for building trust and relationships with customers. Creating marketing content that resonates well with the target market.

A brand has the potential to extend its reach organically by creating content on its Twitter account that resonates well with the target market. Studies have established that a vast amount of search engine marketers use Twitter for communication purposes, sharing best practices and searching for news feeds and reviews that would enable them to earn a competitive edge. Assessing customer reviews: Twitter gives consumers a voice. It hence becomes a critical tool for listening and assessing consumer reviews.

Statistics on consumers who use Twitter shows that 94 percent of the tweets are personal, self-promotional or professional. Building relationship with customers: Twitter opens opportunity for companies to talk directly to customers. Studies show that businesses have a tendency to talk at customers rather than with them, which makes for limited opportunity for markers to be part of conversation. For instance, while brands may use advertising to pass a message to customers, they may fail to leverage the opportunities to connect in a more trusting manner to the consumers in a two-way communication.

However, Twitter has opened up new opportunities by giving business vast means to engage in two-way communications. Statistics show that some 43 percent of tweets are conversation with some 12 percent representing market tweets that signify interactive dialogue. Standard features and tools Twitter has several unique features that make it an effective, reliable, secure and generic marketing tool. These include Verified Accounts, Twitter Lists, Location Feature, Trending Topics and Promoted Accounts, Tweets and Trends.

Verified Accounts comprise of a unique Twitter feature used in preventing fake user profiles, as well as identifying the official or genuine brands or businesses.

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