I know a lot of people are critical of Twitter and think it has no purpose. There are probably even more marketing people who keep reciting this mantra that “Twitter is the future of marketing.” I tend to fall in the middle of this spectrum.
First of all, I don’t think Twitter is the future of marketing. Corporations want to Twitter, and that’s fine with me. Even Comcast has a Twitter, and I really think this is a very cool idea. But while Twitter may work for a lot of companies, there are probably even more companies that it just doesn’t make sense for.
From a public relations angle, Twitter could be a very useful tool. But since the Twitter community is so small right now (comparatively to the likes of the Facebook/MySpace behemoths), do companies really want to dedicate bandwidth to updating Twitter every so often? If Twitter was to become a mainstream tool, then sure, perhaps there are enough followers to justify a dedicated resource. But even though I like the ComcastCares Twitter idea, I don’t follow it’s Twitter stream.
Twitter is not devoid of value, however. What I love about Twitter is that it plugs me directly in to the SEO community. Mainstream individuals get may their news from CNN. The mavens get their news from Digg. But those at the bleeding edge of their community get their news from Twitter, straight from the source.
If someone in the SEO community publishes a new blog post, I’m getting notified of the post almost immediately (via TwitterFox or TweetDeck). We live in an information society, so when I get to tell other people of something new in the industry, this reflects well on me, increasing my social capital and the perception that I am knowledgeable in the field. This is important at work and in the community. And in a community that moves as fast as SEO, the dividing line between building your social capital and losing it to someone else is mere minutes.
Would I love more people to be on Twitter? Absolutely. But not everyone’s niche has a built out community on Twitter yet. It makes sense that the SEO community would have a robust conversion going on pretty much at all times on Twitter. Bird watchers, however, probably don’t have that same robust community. And therein lies the paradox. It takes more people signing up to create the community, yet what is the value of signing up if the community doesn’t already exist?
All those interested can find me at my Twitter account, EricPender. Of course, if you want to take part in the conversion, you’re going to have to sign up.
