Twitter-Fact or Fad?

The media loves a new tech story and nowhere has that been more obvious than the coverage of the Twitter phenomenon sweeping the country.  Still, after reading countless articles and browsing dozens of websites, Twitter’s place in business communications remains elusive.  So, we thought it would be helpful to put Twitter in perspective for our subscribers.

Twitter’s Chronicle
To understand Twitter, it’s important to step back and examine the drivers that changed communications technology over the last century.  Modern electronic communication began with the likes of wireless radio and the telephone at the beginning of the last century.  It continues today, a hundred years later, with cell phones and the Internet.  In the interim, verbal, written, and visual communications changed as mass production lowered the costs for radio and TV making it accessible to nearly every household in America until the advent of miniaturization ushered in a new era of communication driven by personalization.

Business communication also rapidly changed.  The mail ceased to be the leading method of business and legal communications, losing first place to a combination of technologies.  For example, teletype services operating over phone lines, overnight Fed-Ex mail, fax technology, and later email.  Traditional newspaper, radio, and network television, whether used for news or commercial advertising, declined in importance with advent of targeted cable TV, satellite radio, and Internet portals with dedicated search engines.  While all these forms of communication used different technologies, they all had several drivers in common including increased demand for accessibility, personalization, and timeliness of information.
 
Today’s fifth and sixth generation communications methods, like Twitter, have the same drivers.  That is, highly personalized, mobile communications with the added component of real time access to information. Twitter is but another messaging typology in the long timeline of communications. Theorists have coined a term for Twitter and a host of similar messaging methods such as Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.  They call them “social media communications”.

Where Does Twitter Fit In?
To understand Twitter and its various competing technologies, it’s necessary to understand the concepts underlying “social media marketing”.  Academics define it as “an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. Marketers go on to say, “In the context of the Internet, social media refers to a collective group of web properties [sites] whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property.  The operative words are “primarily published by users”.  This distinguishes this communication’s type from that found on a typical home page of an Internet portal or your virtual store online.

Blogs were one of the first forms of social media where users provided the majority of the content for dedicated websites with either personal postings or replies from users that tracked the site.  Eventually, blogs were organized around a vast array of topics and sub topics including business, politics, economics, government, religion, and culture to name just a few.  Practically speaking, blogs allowed tens of millions of amateurs and experts alike to publish their ideas and opinions, making them accessible over time to a global audience.  This democratization of content effectively nullified the monopoly traditional media had over both content and analysis of information.  It also gave a bigger voice to product users opinions, influencing buyers future choices of where and what to buy.

Created in 2005, YouTube was a subsequent social media innovation.  In effect, YouTube could be considered, in part, the audiovisual equivalent of the blog.  YouTube facilitated the dissemination of ideas and thoughts using video media in contrast to writer’s commentaries.  Produced and edited by desktop A-V publishing software for the Internet, users could affordably convert video and audio files from their camcorder, digital camera, or cell phone to streaming media format and publish them to a common portal on the Internet.  Video sharing was the innovation that YouTube brought to social media, the integration of video publishing technology and a dedicated search engine to make users video accessible to hundreds of millions of followers.  Now, Twitter has taken the concept of blogs and YouTube to another level.

Real Time Communications
Twitter is the hottest, new entrant to the fast pace world of social media communications.  But, what makes it different?  To answer that, let’s reexamine the concept of search engines and key words.  As most know, the growth of the Internet has been directly related to the development of search engines that allow users to search the World Wide Web almost instantly for specific information, blogs, video files,…etc. using key words. 

Each engine accomplishes its task of accumulating and organizing web content according to its own criteria using proprietary software.  However, this process is not real time.  New content published on the Internet could take anywhere from a few days to weeks to appear in a search engine directory, only to be buried in dozens of pages of listings.  However, what if web postings could be available real time?  For example, suppose users could connect with a group of followers by typing short messages, called “tweets”, on their computer or cell phone that would be instantaneously available their followers.  Real time messaging and immediate content retrieval is what makes Twitter different. 
According to one business user, “You can send short text messages (up to 140 characters) to one person or to many people. Everybody who is "following" your Twitter account can see your messages, except for "direct messages" that you can send and receive from other people who follow your account on Twitter.”  Combine that with a special search engine that can track and organize all those messages in real time and make them immediately available to both current and prospective followers and you have Version 1.0 of Twitter. 

Putting Twitter to Work
By now you should have a better sense of what Twitter is, but how do you put it to work.  Businesses across the country are exploring how they can use Twitter to increase sales and decrease marketing costs, especially during the recession.  The jewelry industry is no different.  In fact, the nature of Twitter suggests that savvy decision-makers running single jewelry stores and small jewelry chains could harness the format’s real time, highly personalized messaging structure to build one on one relationships with their customers. 

According to Michelle Graff of the National Jeweler, “In an economy where marketing dollars are hard to come by, viral marketing--the kind that can spread a message far and wide by word of mouth--might be part of the cure for ailing retail jewelers.”  Graff goes on to say, “social-networking web sites…, for which membership is free, can help jewelers expose their business to thousands of potential customers, particularly young engagement ring shoppers, without spending a dime.”  In particular, she was speaking of Facebook, but the advice holds true for Twitter too, possibly more so.  However, actually developing and implementing a marketing plan using any of the social media formats such as Twitter is problematic. 

The first thing to do is to open a Twitter account.  This is free.  All that is necessary is go to http://twitter.com  and sign up.  Retail Jewelry Insights (RJI) is identified on Twitter as @rjinewsletter.  As a publisher of a newsletter for the retail jewelry industry, RJI wants to network with jewelry storeowners, decision makers, and other jewelry professionals who are interested in increasing sales and improving cash flow in their businesses during the recession or at any time for that matter.  As a jewelry storeowner, you may want to follow Retail Jewelry Insights to help you keep up with the analysis of news and events  relevant to the industry in real time. 

In addition, you may want to establish your own Twitter account to keep in touch with your customers, suppliers, peers, even competitors.  Generally speaking, experts “suggest that you start thinking and using Twitter in five ways”  these include:
1. Keeping in touch with customers
2. Sales and new product announcements
3. Education
4. Supplier communications
5. Networking

For instance, one goal every jeweler should have today is to be the definitive authority on jewelry for your customer.  Whether that means providing real time information about setting a watch, collaborating on designing a ring, or helping a customer traveling get a piece of broken jewelry repaired, one “tweet” from Twitter can help.  That’s the kind of service that builds confidences, establishes authority, and creates long-term customer loyalty. 

Twitter can also bring news of special events and new product to customer’s real time.  But how you do it is really important.  For instance, if you send a “tweet” to followers that collect figurines letting them know the latest limited edition piece is now available, it will probably strengthen your relationship with those customers.  On the other hand, if you send a text message saying we’re having a 30% off sale, it is likely to be viewed as an unwanted invasion of their privacy. The key is shared relevance.  Is the message equally important to the customer and to jeweler?  If it is, the message is likely to be seen as mutually beneficial and relationship building.  Otherwise, it’s simply advertising and very unwelcomed.

Education and networking is another use for Twitter.  Users say it’s remarkable how fast you can get answers to questions, even with a small number of followers.  Another use for Twitter is staying in contact with suppliers.  Whether it’s about the delivery of product or keeping up with what’s going on in the diamond pipeline or your competition for that matter, Twitter is a practical, real-time tool to help you accomplish these objectives.

Putting It All Together
Clearly, using Twitter requires a commitment in terms of both planning and execution.  While establishing a Twitter account is free, there’s a real cost to the enterprise in terms of people’s time.  The fact is composing and sending “tweets” is the easy part of using Twitter.  The hard part is collecting sufficient information about your customers to make your messaging compelling to the reader. 

That’s because, despite acknowledging the importance of building a relationship with customers, most jewelers know surprisingly little about them.  So start with a commitment to acquiring as much basic information on as many of your customers as possible.  For instance, develop a practical database including birthdays, anniversaries, past purchases, current repairs, service, and the like.  Then use that information to create a segmentation typology to organize and target messages that will be relevant to your customer. 

Likewise, personalize your store messages beyond trade name, brands, and product.  Relationships by definition are two-way and personal. So, communicate a personality that customers can connect with.  Let consumers know what you are doing.  We just saw a great line of silver jewelry.  Fall watch styles are really a great value this year; whatever, but make it real and make it a conversation.  One social media consultant likened Twitter communications to that of the conversation at a cocktail party.  Part business and part chitchat with the express purpose of pursuing relationships.

Later, after you have mastered the basics and begun to establish and segment your followers, you can increase access to and further target specific customers using existing and emerging forms of social communications.  For example, Twitter is now seamlessly integrated with YouTube and Facebook, which allows you to use it to add “tweets” directly to these accounts. In addition, Twitter now has enhanced search capabilities that are helpful in developing your networking capability using key words.  Eventually, you may want to incorporate your company blog or ecommerce site with your Twitter account.  According to one expert user, jewelers “could use RSS feeds in combination with Friendfeed.com.”  This connection would allow marketers to post something to their business blog or ecommerce site and simultaneously update their Twitter account with a link to what was originally posted. 

Can Professionals Help?
Maybe, some marketing companies are beginning to integrate social media marketing techniques into traditional media programs.  Others are offering to write content specifically for social media formats that are described as “unique and newsworthy”. This content can then be marketed by creating messages for Twitter and streaming video for YouTube.  Dubbed “Astroturfing” or "fake grass roots" by many in the social media community, it remains to be seen whether professional marketers will be successful in producing traditional advertising content for use in the highly personalized social communications media. 

Moreover, marketing managers and store decision-makers must remember this technology is in its infancy.  There is really no proven methodology, just experimentation.  Most experts agree, saying, “The parameters surrounding social media marketing are arguably elusive today. The trend is still so new many bloggers, public relations, marketing, and social media experts vary in their definition of what social media marketing entails.” So be wary of marketer’s claims that suggest a turnkey social media programs exist.

Whether you choose to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or the next evolution of social communications technology, it’s a safe bet that real time search and instant messaging will form the backbone of much of 21st century social communications.  It’s equally likely that this kind of instant communication will increase the efficacy of “word of mouth” recommendations from previous store customers for prospective buyers when choosing where to shop and what to buy.  That’s probably even truer for high value, infrequently purchased products like fine jewelry.

That could translate into a huge departure from past communication methodology that depended on broadcast media and direct mail to reach prospective customers.  It also could translate into new ways for jewelers to sell products, manage inventories, and interact with suppliers.


For more information: EMAIL The Gordon Company at info@gordonco.com or call
(954)-763-9800.