Social Media
Promoted Tweets: Finally, a Way To Reach the Elusive ‘Social Media Guru’ Audience
April 16th, 2010
Written by: Steve Koch
It was announced with much fanfare this week that Twitter does indeed have a business model. It’s called “Promoted Tweets” and you can read all the facts here. The short story is that marketers can now pay to have their tweets at the top of search results and, in the future, even within user’s Twitter feeds. Within hours of the announcement, the blogosphere was buzzing with news associated with Promoted Tweets. Articles and blogs offered advice on how to best utilize Promoted Tweets, told us how Promoted Tweets will change other marketing channels and pontificated on how Promoted Tweets will change marketing as a whole — with predictions of an emergence of new ‘resonance’ agencies included for good measure.
But in the midst of all the excitement, one important question was left on the table – who will advertisers reach through Twitter? I mean sure, us marketing folks like Twitter. And there are some moms who use Twitter. Celebrities are fond of having breakdowns on Twitter. And the social media gurus? They love Twitter.
But what about regular people? Everyday Americans? You know, the people out there buying what we’re selling? The truth is that they aren’t on Twitter, and they probably never will be.
Right now, Twitter talks a lot about their 105 million registered users. But, according to Nielsen Online, just 11.4 million people (6 percent of registered users) use Twitter on a daily basis. Throw in the fact that almost 50% of Twitter users are from outside the U.S. and you’ve got a user base of around 6.5 million. Not exactly mainstream.
The reality is that Twitter reached it’s peak about a year ago when celebrities, world news and Ashton Kutcher put the micro-blogging service on the national radar. And during that time, people signed up – in droves. But once they got to Twitter, most didn’t find it useful, and they abandoned it – also in droves. A study last month from Barracuda Labs, confirmed that most users are far from ‘active.’ In fact, 34% of all registered Twitter users have never even tweeted – and 73% of all users have tweeted less than ten times. And at the time of the study, more than half (51%) of of all users were following less than five people.
So, what does this all mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that Twitter isn’t relevant. It just means that Twitter isn’t relevant in the mainstream way we all thought it might be back in May of 2009. For the right advertiser, looking to reach an niche, influential, engaged audience – like social media gurus – Promoted Tweets could be an excellent part of a social media strategy. But it’s not for everyone.
