Not too long ago, Industry analyst Jeremy Owyang tweeted: Twitter is the Vuvuzela of the Internet. Everyone has a horn, blows it loudly, resulting in pure buzzing noise.
His sentiments maybe true in some respect. And quite frankly, many people are thoughtlessly quick to dismiss twitter as a credible source of valuable information. However, intelligent marketers will acknowledge it as a free source of consumer data that can be mined in near real time. That is why; Harvard Business Review (HBR) compiled a comprehensive list, which included a 6-step guide to finding value in tweets.
The complex views that tend to come from twitter’s trending list has rarely appeared the results of opinion polls or attempts to finding a consensus between differing factions of twitterers. That’s is why building and maintaining an image of a brand on twitter remains therefore an immense challenge. Some companies are occasionally concerned that negative tweets tends to damage their brands every time somebody (famous) says something negative about their brand on twitter; other companies or brands, believe that all publicity is good publicity, but despite the evidence to the contrary, it at least assists in rendering their brand newsworthy.
Let’s take a closer look.
HBR’s study represent new developments. Approximately half a million tweets containing the word “ipad” were captured during the product’s launch weekend in April. And based on this, HBR developed a 6-step guide to finding value in tweeter’s noise.
I will just summarize the 6 important points, but for an in-depth analysis, please find the entire study at HBR.
1) Learn about the competitive landscape.
2) Look for unexpected themes
3) Dip deeper into the stream.
4) Look for user experiences.
5) Learn why negative words are coming up.
6) Learn about conversation dominators.
According to HBR, Tweets about your product that include the names of rival brands can reveal a lot about market positioning. In the same study, HBR point to an example on how the majority of the KINDLE tweets didn’t necessarily focus on the iPad being a Kindle killer. Instead, they applauded the arrival of the Kindle app for the iPad— which in turn alerted Apple that its own books app would face serious competition.
In the same study, HBR explains how customer service could be adjusted to address the most common user complaints. How? By finding why negative words /tweets are coming up — it might also turn out to be a great way to locate consumers’ pain points.
To conclude, I would like to your genuine thoughts on whether Twitter is just a Vuvuzela of the Internet, or a very valuable source of consumer data , if carefully mined . Tell us by commenting , Your Group of Web AddiCT’(s) will share them in another post soon.
