Twitter and Your Brand:
Written on the 25 of June, 2009, by Bree Davies
The power and reach of Twitter is undeniable. It’s everywhere. With around 6 million registered users and approximately 14 million visitors per year, the beauty of Twitter is that while this is a significant amount of users, the site is still growing at an exponential rate (those stats are probably already horrendously outdated). So what does all this mean for your brand?
While the sheer numbers of Twitter users should make you sit up and take note, the most important aspect is what Twitterers are actually saying – and how much of it. Millions of conversations are happening, right now, all over the world. And many of these conversations revolve around brands.
An interesting thing happened yesterday which really blew me away, and reinforced the collective power of the Twitter community. A bit of background into the issue: when we are building HTML email templates, we are forced to use a development style which is seriously ancient to cater for Microsoft Outlook. This is because Microsoft Outlook has not conformed to the international standard for email clients, therefore it has some serious limitations which we need to account for, because it is still one of the most popular email clients going around. It certainly doesn’t make our job any easier.
Microsoft recently announced they were going to continue their existing practice, instead of getting with the times for Outlook 2010. Naturally, the digital community was not impressed by this, and led by Campaign Monitor and the Email Standards Project, started a Twitter campaign called ‘Fix Outlook’ to protest. When I first received the email at 2pm yesterday, there were about 200 followers. Now, as I write this blog, there are nearly 20,000 followers. That’s a lot of negative energy out there directed at Microsoft. That’s pretty impossible to ignore (which is effectively what Microsoft is going to do, but that’s another story). But there have been plenty of other stories as well, of brands generating positive buzz through conversations with their audience.
The point I’m getting to here is that while your brand might not be on the same level as Microsoft, chances are there probably either have been, or will be conversations on Twitter about your brand in the future. The first thing you need to do is secure a Twitter account for your brand as soon as possible, even if you don’t use it yet. It’s actually probably better if you don’t start posting straight away – spend some time getting a feel for it first. Do some research. Do some networking. Check out this blog by Michael Britto on ‘10 Best Twitter Practices for Brands’ it’s a must read.
Don’t let your brand get left behind – Twitter is here to stay. Jump on the Twitter Train today.
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Bree Davies
Digital Project Manager
As R&B’s Digital Project Manager, Bree Davies brings experience working for some of Australia’s most high profile organisations including Morrison Media, Endemol Southern Star and the Virgin Blue Group.
