6 Ways Twitter Still Confuses Marketers, But Shouldn't #DigitalSense

For some reason marketers seem to struggle to get Twitter. Too often it’s stereotyped purely on its 140 character limit and complete reliance on real time conversations or earned impressions. That’s a huge shame & a missed opportunity at a time when the platform is more impactful than it’s ever been, but can they really be blamed when there’s so much misinformation out there? I thought I’d try and set the record straight on some common misconceptions.

1. Creativity is too limited to squeeze into 140 characters:

I don’t know what Twitter you’ve been looking at but my timeline is a rich mix of photos, gifs, (live) video as well as some fantastically well-crafted text updates. The ‘cards’ offered to advertisers are one of the richest canvases out there, you just need something to fill them with. Even the text limit itself (recently relaxed to allow you to say more whilst still sharing media) can be a powerful catalyst to clever copywriting – who’s going to read a longer post anyway?

2. Our organic activity is ‘reaching millions already’:

I couldn’t begin to count the number of presentations I’ve sat in which played down the need for paid media support because they’re 'already reaching millions of people'. The worst offence on this front was always sharing an ‘opportunities to see’ calculation based on the total number of followers of anyone engaging with your brand. In reality only a small percentage of those will see anything they Tweet, and if they’re messaging you directly an even smaller portion who follow you both. That conversation you had back & forth with a major celebrity? Only your joint followers were seeing it. Twitter gives a better indication of actual impressions now, but even this can overstate the unique individuals reached.

3. BUT we managed to make the Trending Topics!

A simple education job here: Trends aren’t as universal as you might imagine, they are highly personalised to who you are, where you are and in particular who you follow. It’s hardly surprising that a brand might see their own tags trend if even a handful of followers join in, that doesn’t mean that you’re trending for anyone else in the wider population. Unfortunately it’s very rare for a brand to truly ‘organically’ trend, hence why many are willing to pay for the true visibility of being a nationwide promoted topic. Running an awful hashtag or retweet contest to try and force this does the opposite of build your brand.

4. It’s more important to have engagement & one on one conversations

There’s a curious habit of dismissing the need for reach on Twitter because that’s what traditional media is for, Twitter is all about being part of the conversation & driving 1 on 1 engagement right? Twitter themselves have been known in the past to sell this story but the numbers don’t really add up: however great those moments of personal connection are any brand needs to massively scale them up to be having a real impact. There’s a real danger that you’ll invest endless hours into small organic postings that hardly anyone sees – you’ve had a phone for years, do you ring up all your customers for a chat? OK, B2B marketers fair play to you. You can be relevant to a large audience using clever targeting and responsive creative, that way it can still feel quite personal.

5. You have to be real time & responsive

Jumping on real time trends and having a reaction to just about any real world event is often pitched as a good Twitter strategy. It is however telling that early success stories like Oreo have largely moved past this tactic. Not only do you risk losing your brand message in an attempt to be relevant, you’re also stepping out into the noisiest possible conversations on the platform, where the vast majority of brands vanish without a trace.  Well thought through, finely crafted and well promoted content is a lot easier and a lot more effective than the real time tread mill, and if you don’t Tweet for a few hours/days/weeks whilst you save up your media money? Sorry, no one will notice.

6. No one actually uses twitter anymore, anyway

The ‘RIP Twitter’ news stories have come thick and fast in recent years, seemingly in defiance of the numbers. Twitter had twice the number of active users during the most recent US Presidential debate as it did for the previous cycle, and more so than that they’ve opened up ways of reaching their logged out traffic and even beyond through their ‘Audience Platform’ network (in total to the best part of a billion people). It will be interesting to see if live streaming of sports and key events can help them grow their core audience base further as they do face challenges growing in some markets, and there are questions of their daily return rate, but their potential reach has never been stronger.

OK, so what should we do?

To me it’s surprisingly simple. The audience is there if you want it, but like with any media you really do have to pay to get meaningful scale. Even charities & small organisations will find their impact transformed if they can find ￡50 to put behind occasional posts. There's an engaged and attentive audience but with high expectations to invest in making strong content that will actually be memorable and stand out. Video has an increasing role on the platform, but as with Facebook's newsfeed remember plenty of people are only watching a couple of seconds of your content so rethink it accordingly.

Don’t just think about occasional campaign moments but see how targeting could make you relevant to individuals at different times throughout the week/month/year. There are occasions when jumping into the conversation around key moments can pay off, but only if it’s truly brand relevant and usually if you have the promoted media budget to get noticed in the first place. If you've got no budget at all to promote your content (and even a little can go a long way) think long and hard before investing hours into running a channel.

I am a marketer who helps global brands make sense of media in a digital world; Follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter. These #DigitalSense posts are my attempt to cut through the hype that surrounds the industry. I am Digital Partner at Carat Global, an agency redefining how the world's biggest brands think about media, though these are my personal thoughts. #AgencyVoices