05/13/10 07:57am

That Darn Twitter

This is the first of a series on Understanding the Digital Mashup. More and more advertisers are realizing that while their brands and products are represented on the social Web, they don’t have a strategy for how to leverage these online exchanges.  In the past week I’ve had this same conversation with large consumer brand owners as well as small business owners and it tends to always lead to the same place.  Regardless of size, each is openly challenged by the question of ‘Why’ they are there (in the social Web world).

While there are various levels of engagement companies are taking, the largest fear of being overly aggressive is the two-edge sword of open community feedback.  If not properly managed, these networks can provide a conduit for brand bashing and exposure to customer service issues that are much deeper than online commentary about a current media campaign.

‘This stuff isn’t going away; it’s only going to grow.  It’s best to get a proactive strategy together rather than a crisis management plan with regard to your brand on the social Web.’

Playing in this space now requires that you budget time and capital for it.  No longer can you lob one-way marketing ‘grenades’ over the wall without a few of them coming back over and exploding in your camp.  At a minimum brands have to understand that there is a conversation going on out there about YOU.

Taking Twitter as an example, the explosion of interactions has grown to a rate of over 2.5 million ‘tweets’ per day.

According to Kevin Weil at Twitter, ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)”

At GOC we are building this social Web thought process into each campaign strategy for clients.  Whether we manage the logistics or our client’s carry the social Web elements in-house is no matter.  We want to make sure it’s part of the brand planning conversation.

I’ll share more on how folks are measuring and reporting this dearth of information on my next post.

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