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Wikipedia describes it as ‘a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.’ Twitter’s own About Us page is one better. It says, ‘Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.’ Baah! This sounds so lame and boring. What they should write instead should be something like – Twitter is, in essence, the very internet tool that helped ‘Mr’ Obama become President’ Obama’ or Britney Spears gets high. Again. On Twitter this time, thank God for that! – Such statements would be much cooler instead, don’t you think so?

Allow me to talk numbers here, please. According to Quantcast, more number of females use Twitter than males, the ratio swinging 55 to 45 percent in favour of the fairer sex. And further breaking down into age brackets reveal that people in the 18-34 bracket are most active on this social networking platform than anyone else. That means you, if you are between 18 and 34 years of age. And me, because I am. What this implies is that youth is driving the internet industry most aggressively. And the fact that you’re reading this article on web and not in some magazine is proof.

We particularly like Twitter Search. It is an interesting concept that walks the same line of philosophy as Twitter. But of course, it has to. You search for a keyword and Twitter Search will show you all the Twitter-based activities that have happened around that keyword on the web. This not only keeps you abreast with the latest news and happenings around the keyword searched for, but also lets you see the profiles most active that suit your criteria, so you can start following that!

But we have primarily been speaking about Twitter’s social networking aspects till now. There is another angle that Twitter is quite good at – marketing. The website has more than 100 million users worldwide and this automatically makes it as one of the most lucrative avenues on which to advertise. The beauty of internet is that you can choose your target audience and reach only the TG, if you want – a major failing with publications and television.

Adgully took this topic to well known industry experts in a bid to understand how much of an importance Twitter holds and how it adds up to the bigger picture for them. We spoke with Debolin Sen, Brand Publisher, Lonely Planet and BBC Top Gear, Aditya Swamy, Sr VP – Marketing and Sales, MTV India and Neeraj Sanan, Marketing Head – MCCS (Star News).

A super list of guests that, isn’t it? So what really happens when established members from different verticals of the media industry talk about the same topic? A debate? A brawl? Well, let’s see.
Adgully became witness to interesting perspectives of the mentioned industry stalwarts as they discussed the importance of Twitter in their entire communication strategy.

Debolin Sen, who has his work cut out as the guy sitting at the helm of things for a brand as prestigious as Lonely Planet, is of the view that, “Twitter is key to a brand’s digital presence today. It’s probably the only social tool which is closest to broadcast media. One shouldn’t evaluate Twitter’s role in isolation in a brand building process. Instead view it as part of a well coordinated strategy as Twitter helps reach out multiple brand messages to a core user group like no other medium can.”

“In India, Lonely Planet Magazine has a social/community based website www.travelwell.in. Travelwell.in is a site for travel enthusiasts to share their photos, blogs, videos etc. It also has a twitter, photo and video mash-up that enables users to get inspired from the best travel experiences globally. So essentially we use Twitter to source trending content as also disseminating interesting experiences shared by users of the website,” Sen adds.

Aditya Swamy, a marketing old hand at MTV said, “India has launched a strategic initiative on the social media platform in lieu of reaching out to the consumers. Facebook has been an important platform for us to engage and with the rise of Twitter; MTV India has built a very interesting platform to maintain dialogue.

Neeraj Sanan – the key marketing person at Star News – had a different view of, not just Twitter, but the entire spectrum of social networking. “We are into news and star itself is a big news brand. People do follow Star News as it is already available to them. We have already done this for quiet some time. In fact when it was new to serve the fancy I was very active and often tweeted but now I have reduced it a lot. So somewhere it helps but Star is a brand itself. We have already done it and what I can say about Star is that people are aware of it,” Sanan told Adgully.

Twitter, as a marketing tool on internet works on the principle of more. More the number of followers, better it is for the brand and more effective a mileage it is expected to enjoy. According to Debolin Sen, “To build user bases we deploy social media strategies through invites to specific communities and community leaders in the travel space to connect with us. One of the key factors in building user communities on any social medium is differentiated and updated content. This needn’t necessarily be a brand message but can also be user generated.”

Aditya Swamy too acknowledged Twitter’s importance and building of the brand through more followers. “We engage with the users with relevant/edgy/funny content across MTV and relevant topics for the youth. We also have a one-on-one conversation with the users replying to their queries. The topics of conversation are important, what is more important is the nature of dialogue.” Swamy said.

Neeraj Sanan, on the other hand, had a unique and different approach towards Twitter. “At the end of the day, I am a marketer and my brand is Star. It feels good to have a follower base but Twitter is just a promotional tool. Understand it this way that if I am promoting on Twitter then I am promoting a promoter. It’s a communication tool for us and not much beyond that. It’s good for news gathering. If you go to see the power of digital, then I can say it is powerful but dangerous. These are fancies that stay in for sometime. It may stay for 3 years or 5, 6, 10 years and then something new may come in. So we should know what the core is for us. It’s a wonder for every brand to know the core,” was his statement.
We asked about the level of interaction of a brand with users and wanted to understand what exactly do the brands tweet about.

Sen said, “For us Twitter works across 2 levels: one, a mash-up that helps our community stay updated on the latest trends in travel, and two, sharing community posts and work. We mostly tweet about the best posts on the website, featured submissions, interesting magazine updates et al.”
MTV is famous for its quirky and youthful presentation. Swamy said, “Our objective is to give the users an MTV ‘Unpredictably Cool’ experience off-air We tweet about youth issues, funny pics, trending topics and MTV shows & content.”

Sanan believes that Twitter is more of a fancy item and is good to establish small communities etc. “I just think of it as an application tool and not much beyond that. In fact when I started using it, I was really active and often tweeted but then I reduced it as my fancy was served of the new thing. I realized why I should I tell the world what am I doing and the whole world should know about my moves. It’s good from a celebrity perspective. Twitter is a tool to build small communities and for people who are brands themselves,” he elaborated.

Every marketing move has to be monitored in order to keep it having a positive impact on the TG. Brands advertising through Twitter have separate strategies going on for the entire social media capsule on internet; it has become that important, primarily owing to two main players – Twitter and Facebook.

Sen identifies the need for constant engagement practices and says, “Every message on twitter is tracked back to website clicks. The messages have short URLs associated that allow us to effectively understand traffic flow and user interest on different tweets. This insight is used to generate more interesting tweets and fine-tuning website content. 18 percent of site referring traffic is currently accounted from Twitter.” As a matter of fact, Twitter features on top of things as a marketing device for Lonely Planet and Travelwell; so much so that on its site, Travelwell search has a proper category called Tweets featuring in there!
Swamy said, “Number of retweets, responses for the basis of our reporting. We are now using tools like HootSuite to get better analytics. We also use Klout to test our brand value on Twitter.”

Sanan was on the opposite end of the spectrum. “It is really very difficult to measure anything without a tool. It is for twitter to answer, not for me. Unless there is revenue generation through it, it isn’t wise enough to measure. Take the example OOH is one of the oldest medium that we have existing and we don’t have any tool to measure its effectiveness and twitter is just the new kid on the block,” he added.
Sharing examples where Twitter has delivered effectively, Sen said, “On Travelwell e.g. we have been included in lists created by users around travel topics. We’ve also noticed conversations with users generate higher interest and clicks.”

Swamy responded “We are planning to ask people to tweet live from the Stunt Mania Rockathon auditions with pictures and updates on 22nd May in Pune.”

Sanan, remarked “It can be best described as news gathering tool and communicating with the consumers as I said I did to serve my fancy, something has to be very interesting or must have the power to make me stick to it for a longer time. It is just one of many platforms to communicate. Messaging is very strong though but it should be able to impact us.”

Debolin Sen believes that Twitter is a strong medium that may not exist as a strong advertising vehicle, but “should be used to connect the brand idea with communities that believe in the idea.”

Adiya Swamy too believes that Twitter is more of an engagement medium than an advertising medium. “Advertising yourself via Twitter works only if you have a service people want. But we are waiting for the Twitter ad model to see how it can benefit us,” he explained.

Lonely Planet works closely with M&C Saatchi-i to create the digital footprint of magazine in India while MTV manages the entire activity through internal resources. There are interns that generally work within areas of social media engagement.

Sanan said that there is no agency handling their Twitter activities. “Twitter is not that big for me to keep an agency. We have an agency in place to handle the digital but not for twitter,” he explained.

Adgully also approached two prominent members of the agency world to understand their take on how to use Twitter to magnify the impact on businesses. Harish Tiberwal, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength and Aditya Rao, Co-Founder and Director – Social Business Strategy, Superchooha spoke patiently with us.

When it comes to advise clients towards using Twitter as a marketing tool, Tibrewal explains that Twitter needs to be looked as a mutli-purpose tool. It can be used for: Generating sales leads (by push marketing), Generating sales leads (by pull marketing) and Creating brand value. It can also work as Customer service tool: both by offering customer support via twitter as well identifying customer conversations where there is any kind of brand dissatisfaction and finally Market research tool: Conversations on twitter can find out what your customers are saying about you (your competitor). These are the pointers on which he talks to the client about engagement through Twitter.

Rao, on the other hand, is more of the view to integrate it with the in-house corporate communications team, and not to outsource it to Social Media agencies. “Do not think of it as some new technology that needs to live in silo,” he says.

Twitter should be used for cutting customer support costs, for market research and for Social CRM. It shouldn’t be treated as a marketing tool completely, he reckons.

“Don’t be afraid to listen to negative comments about you. As a brand, worst thing you can do is not listen to the very people who are using your brand,” Rao adds.

Talking of using Twitter and to take help of specialised outfits to help brands, Tibrewal explains saying, “Clients are extremely open to taking help of specialised agencies for the following reasons: There is a technology component involved which needs to be learnt. Also technology is changing very fast (with new features getting added to twitter every now and then). Keeping up with this is not a core-competence for most brands.”

Twitter (or Social Media) in general is very labour intensive. You can just rent media here (like renting space in a Newspaper to put out a print ad or renting TV time on a channel for a TV ad). Here the media needs to be “earned”, one customer at a time, one fan at a time or one follower at time. That requires lot of manual effort

Finally Social Media demands very subtle communication. Most brands are used to shouting…Social Media does not work this way.

Rao, cuts in the picture as he sees. He says, “The millions of SM agencies scattered across India now are spreading wrong things and portraying Twitter as this magical PR tool which can reach millions. Nothing can be far from truth.”

“Everyone wants to be one Twitter. Everyone think it’s a cheap platform to market, so money is less. Some are wetting their feet by replying and RTing positive stuff. Few are replying actively, searching for conversations and integrating with their current communication systems like help desks etc,” he adds.

Sharing some successful client activities on Twitter, Tibrewal marked out the ‘Sachin Crusade against Cancer’ and Just Dial as a couple of examples. “I can not share any case studies but we are working with Axe, Colors TV, IDBI Fortis, Vidhu Vinod Chopra Films, Kites – The Movie to name some of the few,” Rao said.

So, Twitter has been accepted as a strong tool for brand promotion and engagement, by large. It isn’t surprising then, that Twitter is estimated to sit on $1.54 billion revenue, $111 million net earnings and over one billion users!

It isn’t surprising to note that everyone uses Twitter, whether they like the platform, or not, being an inconsequential matter. Twitter has made such an impact on the virtual world we live in that it is simply impossible to discount it as one of the most effective and lucrative options of brand promotion.

Except, what baffles us is that, many established industry experts aren’t quite aware of what’s happening around their brand in the world of social networking. The brands are there, merely existing on Twitter or Facebook, agreed, but what exactly they are doing there is something that’s a mystery to even them! Time to pull up your socks; roll up your sleeves and all the other motivational statements one can think of – to start taking networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook seriously, for only then would the effectiveness be understood properly. And it doesn’t hurt at all – it’s free and gives you a huge database of probable consumers. Beat that!