Maybe it started with department store John Lewis’ ‘Shadow’ Christmas ad in 2007, or maybe the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special, or maybe a tough economy is fueling the need for more ‘feel good’ marketing, but the past few years have seen UK retailers pull out all the stops for their Christmas ads.
Grocery store Sainsbury’s ‘Mog’ spot is the first one I’ve seen so far this year, and it is beautiful. It’s like a mini Wallace & Gromit or Paddington Bear movie in three-and-a-half minutes. My daughter (two and a half) watched it 3 times in a row – which means we willingly chose to watch 10 whole minutes of advertising.
Yes, Twitter is probably a good idea as part of your marketing strategy.
First, my Twitter bona fides: I have been managing Twitter accounts for clients (yes, for money) since 2009 and I have had my own Twitter account since 2010. These days, I’m running 15-20 Twitter accounts for various clients at any given time, and most of those clients are small-to-mid-sized B2B businesses which run the gamut from professional services, IT and finance, to retail, hospitality and even building trades. I have about 6800 followers of my own; each of my clients has between 1000-9000 – and those followers are rated 95% real, not just spammy #teamfollowback types.
In other words, I’ve had to be serious about Twitter for quite a while now (6 years practically qualifies me as an eminence grise in social media terms) and I’ve had to do it for a lot of different types of businesses.
7 pragmatic reasons your small/midsized business should be on Twitter
If you follow me on social media or know me in real life, you’ve probably heard me say, dryly, that some days I’m convinced that 85% of all non-1Direction-related tweets are generated by me and about 11 other social media managers, diligently tweeting away at each other. (The other 15% are a combination of Chris Brown defenders, mommy bloggers, and whatever spambot operation that JabberDuck company got to promote them on Twitter.)
There is a lot of noise and nonsense on Twitter.
However.
Twitter won’t instantly generate a zillion sales for an SMB company, especially in the B2B space. But here’s what it can do as part of the marketing strategy for almost any SMB:
1. Help boost your SEO: Google (and other search engines) indexes Twitter. Because tweets are updated (ideally) daily, they look current to search engines, which means they give them a decent ranking score. What’s more, they increase the sheer volume of content attached to your URL or business name, which makes Google think your company is more relevant than companies mentioned less frequently.
2. Helps keep your other social media channels looking current: By automatically feeding your tweets from Twitter to your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile or other social media, you can keep those channels looking up-to-date without actually having to create additional content.
3. Keep your website from looking dormant: Many SMBs don’t have the time, resources or inclination to update their website very often, so it can start to look a little cobwebby. Setting up an automatic feed from Twitter sends visitors the message that you’re very much an active, going concern.
4. Raise your profile among your target market, vendors, supplies, competitive set and prospective employees: Sure, people who aren’t on Twitter aren’t on Twitter. But I guarantee you that plenty of your stakeholders are paying attention, and a consistent Twitter account does drive awareness. And don’t underestimate the role of people like me: I may be ‘just’ a ghost-tweeter, but my clients depend on me to identify the key players and trends in their space, and I notice who’s doing what. Yes, it’s hard to measure ‘awareness’ and ‘profile’ – but they do matter and Twitter can make a difference.
5. Support your content strategy. How the heck are you going to promote your new blog post or media release if you haven’t built an audience on Twitter? I promise that almost no one is just going to accidentally stumble on it by going to your website directly, and only 323 people like your Facebook page. Twitter gives you access to an audience you just can’t get elsewhere without spending a lot of money.
6. Improve the thought-leadership profile of your CEO (or equivalent): In my experience, most CEOs (or presidents, founders, etc.) of SMBs actively look for speaking engagements or opportunities to expand their sphere of influence by networking. I can’t tell you how many small-business leaders I’ve seen get tapped for speaking engagements or keynote addresses because someone has noticed their Twitter/social media presence.
7. It keeps you on top of your game: Twitter, for all its faults, has the advantage of immediacy. Finding articles or information to tweet about forces you to keep up with what’s going on in your industry, and following the right people means your Twitter feed gets filled up with hot topics that are relevant to you. Both of these things mean you’re better informed and better able to spot trends in your industry earlier than you would otherwise.
Yes, there are certain SMBs for whom Twitter doesn’t make sense – but in the past 6 years the only times I’ve recommended against Twitter for SMBs was for companies in the B2B space who sold a highly-specialized product/service with a very limited target market, whose resources would be better spent marketing directly to those targets on an individual basis.
Last Christmas, this was Fiona’s favourite song (and video):
She could not get enough of it, and spent a lot of time doing her own version of ‘criming‘. It wasn’t long before my husband and I were sick unto death of the song, but of course Fiona wasn’t, which meant that I kept having to pull it up on YouTube.
Social media/pop culture junkie that I am, I couldn’t help noticing it was really racking up views: In December, the video had about 10 million views; by January, it was up to 13 million; by the summer (when Fiona was less interested but it was still in her YouTube playlist), it was up to 20 million.
This kind of long-term traction is very unusual for YouTube: Sure, sometimes a video by an unknown person goes viral and gets a few million views in the span of a week or two; once in a while an older, hitherto-unnoticed video (typically of something super-cute) gets featured on Gawker and gets a couple of million views. But it’s rare to see a video by an unknown continuously generate millions of views, 2+ years after it was first posted, especially if the original poster isn’t producing much other content and isn’t actively promoting their personal brand.
It started to make me nostalgic for the early days of YouTube, when Brookers was the height of creativity and LisaNova was still doing Affirmation Girl.
Then I started to wonder: Here’s this guy, dancing alone in his studio apartment in Germany, racking up millions of views – and for what? Other people have turned their talking dogs into whole careers, so why is this guy basically MIA even as his video is doing what every serious YouTuber wishes their video would do.
Turns out someone else was paying attention, too: He recently turned up in this Deka ad in Germany.
Esoteric back story only interesting to serious YouTube fangirls? Maybe. But it’s still an interesting ad you’ve never seen.
As some of you know, I was pretty fond of my BlackBerry for a long time, and after Apple broke my heart in 2007, I was in no hurry to join the iPhone clone army.
(The truth is I’m still a little in love with the Palm Treo I bought in 2002, but saying that gets me either pitying looks or – worse – befuddled “Wha–?”s from the under-30s, so let’s just move on.)
But in December, with clients asking me to help them with Vines and Instagram campaigns, not to mention a toddler who needed a fair amount of photographing, I decided to bite the bullet and get myself an iPhone 5S.
And you know what? I love it. I don’t run a million fancy apps or run my business on it or anything. But the screen is beautiful, it’s easy to use, everything seems to work together, the photos and videos are almost as good as my Canon Rebel (as long as you remember to turn on the HDR thing), and even my 2-year-old has so far been unable to break the thing. The keyboard – which was what I’d really thought I’d miss when I gave up the BlackBerry – has been remarkably easy to use.
Emotionally, however – yes, whatever, we all have emotional attachments to certain brands and you know it or you wouldn’t keep buying that ridiculous Godiva chocolate which honest to god kind of sucks even though you’re totally convinced that it’s decadent – I still haven’t forgiven Apple for the iPod showdown in 2007, and I’m secretly rooting for BlackBerry to arise triumphant from the ashes of its demise.
And then I saw this piece of cheese:
I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be the target audience here, and here’s how I know:
1. Mid-to-late middle-aged sorta-famous musician dude is wearing a leather jacket, to indicate he’s still cool
2. References made to music. Not that new shit, but, you know, music from when music was rock’n’rolllllll, baby!
3. References to Serious Accomplishments (writing books), Serious Responsibilities (raising children), and Serious Business (using a smartphone, but not for Candy Crush 2)
4. Storytelling, but in a way that doesn’t look like a WordPress site came alive
I am supposed to think, “See, here is a smartphone for adults! Let the kids have their Tumblr-enabled, startup-culture, artisanal-toast-delivered-by-Uber gadgets – I need a real tool for my real business and real responsibilities lifestyle. I’m still cool and creative – I’ve just grown up some, is all.”
(Just in case I haven’t gotten this message sufficiently clearly, BlackBerry explains it in more detail here. With bonus references to Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden for extra street cred.)
Except the whole thing is just one tired trope after another, from the leather jacket to the guitar noodling to the ‘punk was here’ soundbite. Plus – newsflash! – this Duff McKagan guy was in Guns’n’Roses, which was never punk and never cool. In fact, the only thing I associate with Guns’n’Roses is getting stupid drunk on B52 shots at university pubs circa 1990 and begging the DJ to swap out GnR for some good music, like C&C Music Factory.
In other words, BlackBerry isn’t offering me a whole new concept of myself here, or even giving me a chance to see my middle-aged life in a different way through the lens of their genius product. They’re handing me every bad stereotype usually associated with aging baby boomers (“If I wear leather jackets and put mousse in my hair, no one will notice I’m trying too hard!”), and trying to tell me it’s something I want.
Conclusion? I went into this ad feeling a bit sorry for BlackBerry, and hoping they could get their act together. Having seen it, I feel like if this is an indication of their ability to think creatively, it’s no wonder they’re tanking.
Not sure how Kraft got away with this one without an immediate lawsuit from Devo – it’s longer than a normal spot, so maybe it was an internal sales video that somehow went rogue. But it’s awesome.
