Andrew Killinger

Is Twitter a dead marketing tool?

Posted on Sunday, 16 May | Comments

I read a interesting post from Dan Schawbel today over at Social Media Today, and although I don’t 100% agree, he presents some compelling points.  He says:

Every single day, the value of Twitter as a marketing platform will decrease because more and more people are following more and more people, so your message get’s lost. Let’s say you have one hundred thousand Twitter followers. If each of these followers now follows one thousand people, that means only a small percentage, who are logged in at that time, will actually see your tweet. Then, only a very small percentage will click a link from your tweet to the corresponding website. The trickle down effect

1. You tweet a message.
2. Only users who are active on Twitter at that time CAN see the tweet.
3. Only a small number of THOSE active followers will have it come up on their radar depending on how many people they are following.
4. Only a small number of THOSE active followers who saw the tweet will engage with it, and possibly either retweet it or click a link.

The Facts about Twitter

• 106 million registered users (Chirp Conference)
• Growing by 300,000 new users per day (Smash Summit)
• 88% of marketers use Twitter (SocialMediaExaminer)
• 71% of Twitter users don’t want to see “promoted tweet” advertising (Twitter Sentiment Report)
• 88% of the connections on Twitter aren’t reciprocal (Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
• 87% of all Americans are now aware of Twitter — up from 5% in 2008 — but only 7% of the population actually use it (Edison Research)
• 7% of people are active on Twitter (Edison Research)

Key Point: It’s not about your follower number, but everyone else’s follower number, when it comes to marketing on Twitter.

Although Dan highlights how Twitter is becoming increasingly diluted, I question his rationale about the effectiveness of Twitter solely being about the number of individuals reached.  Ultimately, it’s a matter of WHO you reach.  If a Twitter profile that I am managing for a client influences the story of a reporter at the New York Times, it become less about how many followers and more about how many readers/impressions. Check out more here: R.I.P. Twitter as a Marketing Tool