Twitter for Marketing

Last year, I blogged for help in understanding why Twitter was such a big deal. As a marketing pro, I wanted to understand why so many users were touting Twitter as a promising marketing tool when it appeared to be nothing more than yet another social networking site.

Since then, a few things have happened. An airplane landed in New York’s Hudson River; an earthquake was reported in California; and more recently, a Turkish Airlines plane crashed at Amsterdam's Schipol airport. Each time, Twitter was the medium that broke the news and the preferred way to share initial photos or thoughts publicly.

But these catastrophes and tragedies are hardly what businesses want to be associated with. So how does a marketing pro recommend the use of Twitter or other social media to a skeptical executive, especially at a B2B company?

Many reasons exist and I will discuss them in upcoming posts. But until then, here is one that by itself should suffice: Twitter has grown to more than 8 million users as of March 2009 and keeps growing very quickly. In fact, much has been written recently about SNS giant Facebook taking inspiration from Twitter in some of its newest features and layout.

So, while some may philosophically never understand why Twitter is a powerful marketing tool, the debate is moot. Social media are here to stay and Twitter is already one of their leaders.