Posted: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 5:10 pm

There’s been a lot of talk about the power of Twitter – but how are businesses really using it? Lance Concannon, of social media PR agency immediate future, looks at what’s happening with Twitter in the real world.

With the massive buzz that Twitter has enjoyed over the past year, it’s no surprise that many brands are embracing the micro-blogging tool whole-heartedly. Given the media’s habit of being a little over-enthusiastic about every new technology that catches its eye, you would be forgiven for thinking that Twitter is just another flash in the pan. It’s not. We could argue at length about the reasons for Twitter’s success, but suffice to say that something about the service has struck a chord with internet users; it’s easier and more accessible than blogging, it’s more open than Facebook, it just works. So it’s no surprise that consumer brands have been keen to find ways of using the platform to reach out to their customers. In the trade press, much of the coverage of Twitter has taken the form of social media gurus advising on the most effective ways to use it, but apart from a handful of well publicised case studies there hasn’t been an awful lot of information available on how businesses are really using it as a PR and marketing channel.

That’s why we decided to take a look at what’s happening with Twitter in the real world. We selected a cross section of 140 leading UK brands (or international brands with a UK presence) and analysed exactly how they are working with Twitter.

Formal Vs Conversational

One of the first things we noticed is that Twitter is forcing brands to drop their traditional formal marketing language in favour of a more relaxed style. We categorised each company according to whether the style of language it used on Twitter was predominantly formal or conversational, and found that 73% of the group adopted a conversational tone.

This is very much in keeping with what people have come to expect from modern social media marketing. Consumers increasingly want brands to engage them in conversation like human beings, rather than pushing the same old tired marketing messages at them.

A good example of this is Innocent Drinks, which uses a very chatty style on its Twitter page and often responds directly to comments and enquiries from other users. Innocent is an interesting case study for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it was by far the most vocal of all the brands on Twitter with an average weekly update frequency of 900 tweets! This is very much the exception, however, with most brands posting new tweets anywhere between 10 and 200 times a week, on average. There doesn’t appear to be any particular sweet-spot between those two figures, each company seems to settle on a frequency that works well.

Introverted Vs Extroverted

Another area where Innocent is in the minority amongst brands on Twitter is that it displays extroverted behaviour. By this, we mean that instead of focusing entirely on its own brand and products, the company is happy to talk about other issues and topics that might not always be directly related to its line of business. Only 21% of the sample group were extroverted.

A lot of marketing professionals might struggle with this idea, but a good example of how it can work well comes from Kodak. By talking about a wide range of photography related issues rather than keeping the conversation tightly focused on Kodak, the company attracts interest from a wide range of photography fans, even those which may not yet be Kodak customers, and sends out the clear message that the company is as passionate about the subject as they are.

Engagement Vs Broadcast

We also compared the brands in our sample group to see how much they engaged people in conversation on Twitter, and how much they use the channel simply as a broadcast tool. While a large number of brands continue to use Twitter for broadcast (that is, using it primarily to publish links to content on their website) there is a noticeable trend towards engagement.

Failing to engage with your followers on Twitter can be damaging – they understand that Twitter is an environment for conversations to take place, and if they don’t feel like you are listening to them and not using the channel as it is intended, you run the risk of a backlash.

An interesting example is Asda, which primarily uses Twitter to broadcast information about special offers with links to the main company website. But in addition to this, it also retweets (that is, republishing somebody else’s tweet on your own Twitter page, like forwarding an email to your friends) positive brand mentions from other Twitter users. Where Asda might run into problems with this approach is if customers accuse it of being unwilling to respond to more critical comments, choosing only to highlight positive references.

Short Vs Long Term

A common mistake we spotted is the use of Twitter for short bursts. This is understandable, since marketing people tend to think in terms of campaign led activity, but it doesn’t really work for Twitter. The platform lends itself well to establishing a profile and building relationships over the long term, but trying to use it to support a three month marketing campaign will only lead to failure. When we carried out our research, Walkers Crisps had only used its profile to support a short term campaign – the profile had few updates and less than 100 followers, and it’s hard to see how it could have added much value to the campaign.

Since then, however, the brand has followed the lead of Innocent Drinks and started using the profile to engage with its audience. It’s very quickly gone from hardly being noticed at all, to seeing dozens of Twitter users having conversations about the brand, and this is likely to improve significantly over the longer term if the brand continues on this track. Other consumer brands would do well to pay attention.