Twitter and the Internet Marketing Machine

Although currently Twitter is more hype than it is popular there a clear sign that it is gaining steam. More and more companies are including it as part of their viral marketing and overall digital customer relationship management programs.

Thinking about the growing popularity let’s take a step back and speculate the future (and partly present)

1. Imagine that the vast majority of companies/brands/products also have twitter profiles.
2. Now imagine that 25% of them are running a sweep/initiatives at at time (lasting a month) which involves you to both following them on twitter and also (the viral aspect) retweeting specific messages regarding their product.
3. The result: Millions of consumers retweeting messages about everything from new female hygene products and CAT scanning machines to specials on pork at your local butcher.
   

Would you unfollow your friends? What if they are all doing it?

Back to reality and the present…

So far we’ve seen this kind of marketing/adverting widespread with iphones (one of them was moonfruit). Mostly the strategy I’ve seen so far on companies using twitter to advance their digital CRM is to use it more of a notification tool on news/products/contests. Well that’s not so bad? It does feel like this is just the entry point/discovery they are doing to get thier feet wet and see what this is really all about. Whats next when they realize potential.. but what is the potential?

..but what is the potential?

Two of the top 5 methods that makes online advertising and marketing really work are:

1. Product relevance
2. Accurate market targeting.

Twitter does not really provide either of these things, but there is a big payout from getting people to twitter about your product/website/competition… Increased search engine ranking through twitters indexing & market awareness.

Increased SEO and Market awareness

One of the fool proof ways to increase your ranking through Search engine optimization is having your website and content referenced all over the web. The more it is the better you do. So if you have 3 million people twittering about your website or product your SEO is not going to be too shabby.

My speculation is that prize hungry consumers will tweet and retweet more and more possibly even putting the tweets up on blogs/forums. The sweeps/competitions which would drive viral marketing measurements up would also potentially drive the attractiveness of twitter down.

Think of those friends that forward you every chain email they get, and then think of how many more people would do the same with clear incentives.

So will twitter continue to grow like it is or will it turn from a great social networking tool into a advertising and marketing spam tool.

Google vs Bing: Rose-tinted glasses?

Since the launch of Bing I've been seeing so much media hype ( try search bing on google news ) about Bing, its increasing market share, how it is bypassing yahoo (now on two occasions) as #2, etc. After trying out Bing a few times I started to find it all hard to believe. How was it having the impact I was reading about?

The source of all the latest and greatest on which search engine has what market share is Statcounter. Yet if you look at Statcounter there are two very big misses... almost like we are being presented the facts through rose-tinted glasses.

The Facts ( Statcounter: Jan 01 2009 - July 09 2009 )

1. MSN + Live search = Bing
Bing replaces both MSN search, and Live search (perhaps other Microsoft search tools too?). Combine the usage of these without any marketing dollars and what do you get? Well a little short of where Bing is per Statcounter, but not by much.

It seems to me that forgetting to point out that Bing naturally gets the MSN search and Live search traffic is a good way to show grand results against marketing/promotion dollars. Bing 0% to 10%+ in just a month? Come on? Really?

How much money is Microsoft sinking into Bing, and what is the return against historic MSN and Live search return?

2. Live vs Yahoo
Does anyone notice that this year Windows Live on its own would bypass Yahoo periodically. Did that make headline news? Should that historical data have an impact on the way we look at Bing's data?

Well whats next?
I expect if Microsoft does keep sinking large amounts of marketing dollars into Bing that it will increase its marketing share by minimal amounts. Maybe?

Further Pondering
1. What about Mobile search? Is Microsoft not really taking that seriously? It feels like Google and Yahoo are. With the mobile vs PC search usage in emerging Asian markets will PC search still be something we even pay attention to as a measurement of who holds market share?

2. As Chrome (and in the distant future Chrome OS) pick up market share in their sectors what impact will they have on Search Engine market shares? It feels like Microsoft search tools have already failed at keeping Windows/IE users by presetting their browser search and home page.