Comments on: Any companies engaged with Twitter? I found two

By: John

John — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:03:35 +0000

Does anyone have a more comprehensive list of companies using Twitter?

By: Colonel Tribune

Colonel Tribune — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:16:17 +0000

Good point, Dan.

By: danperry

danperry — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:27:56 +0000

@ColonelTribune I didn’t include media companies, mainly because they aren’t really “engaged” by definition. I would expect them to be feeding me updated news on a regular basis. Not quite engaged, but serving their purpose. That’s why you don’t see any above.

By: Colonel Tribune

Colonel Tribune — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:55:12 +0000

What about the Chicago Tribune’s persona, yours truly? I happen to be pretty spiffy, you know.

By: Chinavasion

Chinavasion — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:07:24 +0000

This is a great idea you gave us! We’re going to treat Twitter like a mini press release area and see if customers find it useful.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:20:29 +0000

Hi, I work for Smarter Travel Media and we’re just getting started with three of our brands on twitter: @SmarterTravel, @BookingBuddy, and @SeatGuru.

We’re still in the experimentation phase and we can learn from your analysis. Thanks!

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:41:55 +0000

I think it’s important to factor in the type of customer that would follow a companies Twitter feed. One would have to assume that anyone taking the time to regularly check a companies feed is extremely loyal and extremely likely to bite on any marketing.

Quality, not quantity. Just a thought.

By: danperry

danperry — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:25:49 +0000

@Anoop: I agree that there shouldn’t be a lot of resources dedicated to this type of initiative. The reality is that it doesn’t take that many resources, and it doesn’t take that many resources to do it right. The online and social aptitude of the individual running the account is the key. If it takes a group effort (PR, marketing, Product, etc.) it’s almost guaranteed to fail, shining a negative light on the company.

In addition, there are vast differences in actually being engaged, and just adding links to your own content. From what I’ve seen above, more of the latter than the former. Time will tell. Thanks for the well-thought out comment.

By: Anoop

Anoop — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:50:51 +0000

Thanks for a good post, Dan.

I wonder how long would it take (if ever) before Twitter becomes compelling enough for marketers for reach purposes. If the total universe of all active twitter users in US is less than 0.5M, how many can a company hope to reach? Debate on size – http://snurl.com/22wr6

Granted that if done right, only the most relevant and targeted audience would follow (in twitter sense) your messages but one must question if it’s prudent to reallocate marketing resources from other larger reach mediums.

For market research purposes, as a complement to focus groups, it has a lot of potential for a sharp and creative market researcher to extract narrative insights for almost no expense. Jeremiah did a great job with SuperBowl Ad tracking….:-)

Companies that already blog can use the same resources to dip their toes into micro-blogging too. However, if web content generation is not core to their business model it will be difficult to justify a lot of resources to such initiatives…but then, it may not need a lot of resources beyond talent to make an impact.

By: danperry

danperry — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:37:25 +0000

@Stewart Good point, and it could be true; I really don’t know. I will say that, considering Apple is pretty strong in their other forms of marketing, they could be a great fit for Twitter.