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Spider
07-14-2009, 09:00 AM
Just overheard on some blog somewhere....

"...Everything you ever wanted to know about everything in 140 characters; it's anti-marketing, and the height of non-communication. The "Cluetrain Manifesto" concept of a global Internet conversation has been corrupted beyond recognition. True communication implies meaningful dialogue, not instant messenger pseudo-speak and Twitter twaddle. ..."

Thought some of you might like that!

Business Attorney
07-14-2009, 11:16 AM
I have a hard time saying ANYTHING in 140 characters. I do text my kids for short things ("R U still going to the Cubs game?"), but most of my communications even to family members have nuances that cannot be conveyed in 140 characters.

vangogh
07-14-2009, 11:18 AM
Interesting. Could you post the link to the article. The rest will probably be interesting to read as well.

I know some people feel that way about Twitter and other similar services. I think it's more a case of it being about a certain kind of communication as opposed to being anti-communication. You generally aren't going to get a deep and meaningful conversation in a single tweet, that true, but you can get a close to real time source of information.

You can actually get deep and meaningful tweets too. A Haiku could easily fit in 140 characters. Now most people aren't going to write them, but that's not the fault of the medium.

If you follow the right people you can get some good information and you can effectively communicate with them. When I see people complaining about the service it's usually people who haven't really taken the time to get to know what it does well and instead do a quick focus on the bad after a shallow glance at what's going on.

You can find good and bad everywhere and Twitter is no exception. What you get out of the service usually has more to do with you than the service.

KristineS
07-14-2009, 01:41 PM
I was staunchly anti Twitter for a long time precisely because it was so truncated. I didn't think anything useful can be said. It is true that Twitter probably isn't the place for long meaningful conversations, but it is a good place to connect with people with whom you might like to have long meaningful conversations in another venue. For me, Twitter has been a great place to make contacts and a lot of those contacts have extended outside of Twitter.

vangogh
07-14-2009, 01:59 PM
Yeah, you really have to understand the medium and see what it does well and what it doesn't do well. Without a doubt there is a lot or meaningless chatter (or would that be twatter) on Twitter. But for many people that's perfectly fine and I wouldn't expect that to change. However there are people tweeting useful info and you can use the service as a marketing tool.

I use it a lot for market research. I have some searches set up and I monitor what people say about a topic. You can discover trends by seeing what words are mentioned more often. You can link to new content and pick up some traffic. Twitter has proven to be a pretty decent source for news, because of how fast people can tweet and how fast something can spread.

A couple of years ago an American citizen was taken into custody in the Middle East (I forget which country). He only had time to make a quick tweet before he was taken, but because of that tweet people back here were able to get him released. Lately people were following the election and subsequent rioting in Iran. Twitter was practically the only source for information to the extent that the U.S. government asked them not to do a maintenance update that would take the service offline for a few hours.

You can use it for networking, especially in combination with other social sites. People are probably asking questions right now about your industry and you can offer a quick answer in help, which might then lead to a longer discourse via email. I know some pick up clients this way.

It's true that you aren't going to have a deep conversation in a few tweets, but not every interaction needs to be deep and meaningful. Most human relationships don't start out that way. They tend to start out more shallow in nature and build to the more meaningful.

As far as the 140 character limit, it's imposed by SMS messaging since Twitter is partly meant to be used on mobile devices. Sure it makes some communication difficult, but it can also help you become a better writer by forcing you to get across your message with less words.

Communication that works well in print, doesn't necessarily work well on the radio. Communication that works well on the radio doesn't necessarily work well on tv. Communication that works well on tv doesn't necessarily work well on the internet and so on and so on.

Different mediums have different strengths and weakness. Twitter (and similar) are simply another medium for communication. Some will find it works well for them and others will find it doesn't. Neither makes the medium good or bad. It's just a tool like most other things.

Spider
07-14-2009, 02:23 PM
Your wish is my command

What Makes Your Business So Special? (http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/What-Makes-Your-Business-So-Special.html)

vangogh
07-14-2009, 02:45 PM
Thanks Frederick. It's a really good article too. I'd encourage everyone to read it. I completely agree with the article's ideas about branding. I think branding is far more important than some of the other things businesses do to market themselves.

My social media thoughts are more inline with the sentence just before the one you quoted


Today's mad dash to join the Twitter craze is another example of conventional wisdom gone wild. Just because everyone is doing it, doesn't make it an effective marketing communication tactic

I agree that just because others are doing it doesn't mean you have to and it doesn't automatically make Twitter a good marketing tool for your business. The service itself wasn't set up for marketing in the first place. To me all the new and different ways we have to communicate are simply tools. They aren't good or bad, useful or useless on their own. They're just tools to communicate. Any can be used effectively and any can be used poorly and some will work better for you and your business than others.

I think it's a good idea to understand social sites like Twitter to understand their pros and cons and to understand how they might be useful to you, but by no means do you have to use it.

Ad-Vice_Man
07-22-2009, 04:26 PM
I have a hard time saying ANYTHING in 140 characters. I do text my kids for short things ("R U still going to the Cubs game?"), but most of my communications even to family members have nuances that cannot be conveyed in 140 characters.

Well you're a lawyer and clearly an exception :) My lawyer friends have a hard time saying anything in 140 pages :)

jonicode
09-07-2009, 11:42 AM
Frederick, that's a good one. I would really love to read the rest of the article so if you still remember the link, could you share it with us please? Would really appreciate it, thanks in advance!

Spider
09-07-2009, 12:12 PM
What Makes Your Business So Special? (http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/What-Makes-Your-Business-So-Special.html)

Digirank
09-08-2009, 08:24 AM
If you think 140 characters is too restrictive and can lead to communication confusion, then I'm interested to know what you'd like the max character limit to be to get your message out there?

<please set up a signature>

ELCaD
09-08-2009, 09:28 AM
This is a good and interesting read.
I jumped on Twitter quite late in the day and still haven't made my mind up on it.
Thanks

Harold Mansfield
09-08-2009, 11:44 AM
I'll be the first to admit, I wish Twitter didn't exist. Just something more to consume time and monitor, but, I do have to admit that I have made some good connections and have gotten some great story ideas, and industry information for my blog via Twitter that I may have not ever found without it.

I don't know how effective Twitter is for any other kind of business, but for someone who writes a blog, it's one of the best things to hit the web since Amazon. There is no reason that if you participate even a little that you cannot get some great story ideas from Tweets..no matter how obscure, or new the information, someone is Tweeting about it somewhere. The key is just to follow the right people.

It's also good for market research. You can use various search tools that utilize Twitters API to discover what products people are talking about, get feedback on purchases, what people are thinking about buying and use it to your advantage in your affiliate marketing, I guarantee, pretty soon you will see people Tweeting about Xmas gifts and what they are buying for kids and loved ones, asking people where to buy certain items.

Paper Shredder Clay
09-16-2009, 12:55 PM
I think that short communication sparks greater communication. Businesses are able to grab and hold the attention span of younger audience by keeping the words few. When its small talk, everyone can get their word in. If you want more information to follow, all you have to do is post a link to a blog. Twitter can act has a table of content for people to read only what blogs peak their interest.

vangogh
09-16-2009, 06:17 PM
I think that short communication sparks greater communication.

I don't think that's true at all. I think it sparks quicker communication, but not greater communication.


Twitter can act has a table of content for people to read only what blogs peak their interest.

That's an interesting way to look at it and I can see under that context you could say it sparks greater communication, though I still disagree. The greater communication is still happening on the longer blog posts in my opinion.

Harold Mansfield
09-16-2009, 11:20 PM
Twitter can act has a table of content for people to read only what blogs peak their interest.

They already have 1 of those, it's called Google.
I'm torn between being able to utilize Twitter and therefore liking it, but still questioning how functional, and effective it really is...or how long it will hold people's interest.

The practical side of me thinks it will burn out because the spam will bury any marketing potential across the whole network and turn people off. I also don't see any real stable application for a business...I mean sure companies like Best Buy are utilizing it successfully, but when you have national T.V. advertising, you can pretty much capitalize on anything you announce.

Now they are going to start displaying ads (at least I hope it's a display and not filtered in with the Tweets), I just think it has the potential for information overload. Just a constant stream of marketing pitches and advertising..which is where it is headed now...fast.

vangogh
09-17-2009, 01:39 AM
One of the places where Twitter is going is real time search. Google is great at indexing and serving results for what's been. It's not as good at being able to determine what's happening right now. Twitter is very good at what's going on right now and what people are talking about right now.

We might want it to be something beneficial for us as marketers, but it doesn't have to be in order for it to be successful. The spam could be a problem. That's true. We have to wait and see how Twitter deals with it.

With the ads it depends how they display them and how often. I'm using the free version of Tweetie as a desktop client and it does occasionally show an ad as the first tweet. It's not too much though and I don't really mind. Twitter is still searching a bit for a business model. I don't know that advertising will be it, but it advertising may or may not be bad depending on how they do it.

Paper Shredder Clay
09-20-2009, 02:23 PM
Perhaps, I should have said more instead of greater.


I don't think that's true at all. I think it sparks quicker communication, but not greater communication.



That's an interesting way to look at it and I can see under that context you could say it sparks greater communication, though I still disagree. The greater communication is still happening on the longer blog posts in my opinion.

vangogh
09-21-2009, 12:52 AM
More works.

greenoak
09-30-2009, 09:01 PM
thanks for a new phrase...twitter twaddle....i always learn something when i come here!!!. ann
Green Oak Shop Talk (http://www.greenoakshoptalk.blogspot.com)