That is the question I was facing last semester, here at Marquette University. Since then, I've used Twitter on a daily basis, but most of the time I still face that question, nearly every time I've use it. Then, I realized the true purpose of Twitter, and it's not tweeting. Twitter is social media, and aside from being a site for social expression, it is truly a business' dream. Twitter's value is not the plethora of tweets and meaningless anecdotes. It is in it's underlying potential to show the interests and aspirations of individuals, consumer's and organizations alike.
Where Facebook is the expression of immediate and perceived self, sites like Twitter and Pinterest present the detailed interests of the actual person, not who they want people to think they are. Now, it is true that Facebook has this potential as well, but not in a professional sense, it is private. Twitter on the other hand, demonstrates an ability to obtain a more business related perspective. For example, Facebook can teach you about a person's relationship status, basic interests, and other demographic information. Twitter, on the other hand, shows an individuals more sophisticated interests and personality traits.
If, on Facebook, you observe a post in which someone details the stress of their day, to a business, this has little value. However, if you tweeted a brief description of your day, followed by the #stressed, it would place you in a larger group of other people who have been #stressed. Now, this is useable, because it creates a group or list of like-minded individuals for advertisers, marketers, and other business professionals to target this group. As marketing and advertising techniques advance, sites like Twitter and Pinterest provide priceless access to the individual consumers. This access is data. It is useable information to a marketer. #stressed creates a mini-market that can be targeted by a business to sell goods or services to. Continuing on with the #stressed example, let's say a pharmaceutical company just created a new drug for 18-30 year old's that relieves stress. This company already has a starting point for it's new drug, #stressed. Although this is a fairly elementary and basic example, it allows us to analyze Twitter's true potential for the business sector.
Now, in regards to a client, I have noticed a direct need for large to small corporations to invite their consumers to meet and get to know their executives. In a world where we have a large amount of distrust in the business sector, it is surprising to see not many active executives providing bio information and ideas specific to them. If, as a company, you create a foundation of trust between market and organization based on the well-crafted tweets of an executive, you have stepped out of the area of distrust. If I know, as a consumer, how the top-down of a company is ran and by whom, I can feel confident in my loyalty to the brand. So, as for any client of mine, I would encourage more activity from executives and top officials on Twitter. If you build it, they will buy. So, build a foundation of trust, and the consumers will follow, literally.
If I was to select five people/organizations I'm following as my favorite, they would be as follows: Edelman PR, FC Barcelona, Golin and Harris, Edelman Digital, and Marquette University. I will continue following all of them, because, in line with what I have said, these define me as a person and a consumer and that is what Twitter is all about.
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