Ahhh, Twitter. If there was a thought bubble coming out of the collective brains of advertisers regarding Twitter, it would have been empty for a long time.
How do we use Twitter?
You can't easily slap an ad on Twitter because, well, the primary reason being that they don't take standard display ads. But the problem of Twitter is deeper than just a matter of display ads: once you decide to use Twitter as a tactic, the strength of your strategy is completely tested.
As we all learned in Marketing 101, all marketing plans should start with a marketing objective. Usually it's something like, "Generate awareness! Grow distribution!" Then you figure out the strategies you will employ to meet those marketing objectives. If the objective is to "Grow awareness and purchase intent of new product line," then you put together a Communication strategy that may include using PR, Advertising, Promotions, etc to help meet those goals. Strategies are based on both your objectives as well as insights about your product and your consumer. Once you identify the appropriate strategies (which should be based on insights from your target, geography, seasonality, etc as well as input from your brand positioning), THEN you look at specific tactics.
The problem is, we usually say, "Everyone is using Twitter! Quick! Get a Twitter account!" and then brands/agencies try to figure out what to do with Twitter. If you know what your brand hopes to accomplish and have a clear idea of your objectives, strategies and brand positioning, then it is abundantly easier to develop a plan of action for how to use Twitter. For example, BananaRepublic decided that their strategy for using Twitter would be to broadcast the latest sales and deals to drive online sales. So. Simple.
For brands that want to grow awareness of product benefits and attributes or change perceptions, they may spend more time developing the brand's personality or sharing product news (Apple tweets all of their conferences to generate excitement for new products/features).
How do people use Twitter?
A frustrating phenomenon among interactive specialists is a dichotomy between innovative thinking (what if we merged this application with this product and created... ) and an over-reliance on numbers without analytical thinking.
So when Twitter hit a "tipping point" and grew leaps and bounds, the numbers looked great! Yay! Brands, politicians, and pets all have Twitter accounts now. Hurrah!
And then the next month new numbers came out. It was almost like everyone found out the prom queen had herpes. "Did you hear that half of the people that use Twitter don't come back?" "Did you know that 10% of all Twitterers account for 90% of tweets?" Twitter was practically disgraced, there was a sense that the industry was looking the other way.
But I think those numbers need understanding. HOW do consumers USE Twitter?? I've found that more often than not, I just like to read Tweets. I like to see updates from Ashton Kutcher. I like to know where John McCain has been. I check out TwitPics and TinyURLs to get more information. And - gasp - I don't even have to log-in to Twitter to tweet and read tweets! I can tweet from my phone, Tweet Deck, Blippr, etc. I can read other tweets through RSS feeds on websites and blogs. More people are exposed to Twitter feeds than probably even realize it!
So what does Twitter become then? I read a great article that said that Twitter's usage patterns are more typical of Wikipedia than any other social networks. Of course it is! Twitter is a living, breathing search engine. When an episode of Lost airs, you can watch the trending as people talk about the characters and the story line. You can search for specific topics and find real-time information. In a lot of ways, it's similar to Digg because it taps into what people WANT to know about and not what media groups are broadcasting at consumers.
It should be no surprise that Google might be looking at Twitter as an acquisition target. What better compliment to Google than a dynamic, live tool?
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