Twitter: “I’m Not Dead Yet!”
Throughout the last month or so, I had been reading about how many people thought Twitter had lost its relevancy. Some commenters on LinkedIn Answer forums had even gone as far as calling it a waste of time. I have even experienced this first hand in the office. While we were discussing our company's 2010 digital marketing strategy, one of our VPs was stating how Twitter was losing steam and down-played its effectiveness in the social media landscape.
I'm not discrediting any of these thoughts right off the bat. There has been data from the end of 2009 that showed Twitter's growth slowing down, even going in a negative direction as far as unique visitors were concerned. At face value, this could indicate that Twitter was nothing more than a fad and it was only a matter of time before it went the way of the Dodo.
However, I disagree. The number of unique visitors may have let up but the number of actual tweets is going up. This means that people aren't flakily using it. The users who actually utilize it are doing more and more with it. The flaky tweeps are phasing out and making way for more serious tweeters. Also, Google's incorporation of real time search has helped Twitter's case for growth even better.
This is huge for marketers. You have to go where your market is. If your target is on Twitter, the odds are better now than a year ago that your audience not only uses Twitter, but use it fairly avidly. I know for B2B purposes, it has proven to be a much more effective relationship builder for our company than any other social network we use. We've established relationships online that have carried over into the desired face-to-face interactions with those tweeters we've conversed with.
Plus, Twitter is just plain fun. It's such a cool way to learn new information. I only wish the word "tweeter" didn't sound so dirty...