The Value of Twitter

Yesterday, Marc Meyer posted a list of 20 Twitter Brands Behaving Badly on Social Media Today. Inspired by this list of the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter, he noted that several of these highly discussed brands are choosing not to engage with their audience on Twitter. Worse, some of these brands missed their opportunity to claim their brand name on the site, and now brandjackers are controlling their Twitter presence by controlling the content posted by their brand name.

Twitter is somewhat of an anomaly within the world of social media marketing. Where brands have been quick to recognize the value of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Myspace, developing and maintaining a presence on these sites, Twitter has been often overlooked as a fad. The number of blogs and articles pondering the long-term worth of Twitter is astounding. Perhaps no other social networking site has been looked at with such ongoing scrutiny. The time has come to acknowledge that Twitter is here, it’s highly utilized, it’s growing and it’s worth every marketer’s time.

While we have not been surprised to see how Twitter has grown in the past year, it has been interesting to note that the fasting growing demographic on Twitter is the 45-54 age range, offering further confirmation that not only is Twitter not a fad, but it’s full of highly influential users:

Brands of all sizes and across all industries should be paying attention to Twitter now if they have not already done so. Proactive brand username claiming and reputation monitoring are the absolute minimum activities that all brands should employ as their Twitter strategy. Stop waiting for a consensus that Twitter is a viable marketing channel – too many brands have missed the boat and we’ve all seen the repercussions.