Micro-Blogging ... like Twitter

By Dale Wolf

It took longer than it should have taken for marketers to discover blogging.

Now the same is likely to be true with micro-blogging -- the newest form of online social communications. Most of us have heard of people tweeting on Twitter, but dismissed it as something done only by people with too much time on their hands.

Now it is evolving ... just as blogs evolved from personal diaries to sources for thought-leadership user-generated content. Micro-blogging into private or public channels will eventually be seen as yet another marketing medium. If you have something useful to tweet about, then other tweeters will join you.

Here's how Forrester describes the phenomenon:

Microblogging is a Social Computing tool that allows users to send brief updates to public and private networks. Twitter is the most prominent microblogging site, attracting approximately 447,000 unique visitors in August 2007. Other current microblogging sites include Pownce and Jaiku.

And here's how they see its usefulness:

Social expression entries are typically written by a single user with an associated profile. Microblog users offer individual commentary on subjects ranging from A to Z — many users describe what they are doing or thinking at any given moment, while others use the service to post links and draw attention to external content. Pownce allows users to post video and event links in addition to text.

In a world jammed with more information than we can possibly absorb (or even find), how do we get information that we trust. We get it from people we trust. Our friends who know us and send us stuff they know we would like to know about. And that's where micro-blogging as a viable marketing medium takes off. If we can get people talking about our company or its products from an advocate point of view, then they will share this information as they access and use all forms of social online media. We think micro-blogging will be a big player in this aspect ... it is a way of injecting a message into a sphere of influence and if it is useful and valued, it will spread. If it is self-serving, it will become part of the ooze the actually does more damage to a brand reputation. Tweet, but tweet with respect.

t should not take too much time for a smart PR or Marketing Professional to see how using social media will reap benefits. Of course, early on it will be the early adopters and the audiences will be small. But eventually there will be more and more who will "cross the chasm" of innovation and discover how to tweet themselves to unique, valued customer experiences that are built on genuine interest in topics that their customers are interested in talking about.