Marketing case study : the story behind Twitter's success

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I first created my Twitter account in 2007 when it was just about to get popular, at its first impression I was like who the hell would want to use this? and after a few months I knew how wrong I was about it, but till today I stand up to this that Twitter is just a waste of time for common surfers and its just a tool for marketers and businesses. Thats why only marketers promoting B2B products and sites perform well. Other consumer related once don’t stand a chance, that is why SEO and MMO blogs write about Twitter as a great resource and which is the main reason for its popularity.

If you’ve read few of my older posts, you’ll notice that I’m not a firm believer of believe what you see when it comes to mainstream media. Their are many things going on behind the scenes of Twitter and for those of you who think that Twitter got popular without advertising, I can say that you must think again, because the methods used by Twitter are one of the most expensive in the industry.

I always have a habit of finding out the promotional methods and business plans used by various companies, I use a hell lot of research, planning and imagination to come to my conclusions. So this case study may not be entirely true, but I assure you that 70% of the content you read here will be, moreover its recommended that you take this as a marketing case study.

Establishing an audience

For any business or blog there is a need of an established audience before you try to create a viral chain. For a blog this comes very easily, but for internet businesses especially for ones like Twitter, its ten times harder, mainly because they get very less exposure from search engines and social media and their main source of initial exposure would be mainstream media such as newspapers, magazines and TV programs.

For targeting such mainstream media you’ll need to have a unique service which Twitter did have and when your new its better to target the smaller ones in the industry. So Twitter didn’t get the wild idea about calling all of them and asking them to showcase their products. There are two ways you can do this, but one thing necessary is that you hire a publicist, either full time or part time.

So now with the help of the publicist you can either use his contacts with the media to write about you, or maybe you should pay them to write about it. According to my research Twitter did pay a small amounts as a bribe initially, but they managed to get a free reviews after awhile because it was pretty unique.

For your business as well, the first audience can be crucial, you can use a few of the above methods and they are sure to bring in a few visitors, but its up to you to use them as a handle to trigger a viral chain. For blogs you don’t have to go so much ahead, as there are simpler tactics, one of them includes the simple online press release which costs just a few bucks and are enough to get you initial exposure.

Building on it

Twitter built its base within just 2 months, so they had everything to send their service viral and this is one of the few advantages of owning a social network. Twitter could easily provide an invite friends option and soon one user could be followed by five others, this works really wild if you’ve got some incentive to provide for those who invite new visitors.

Of course the quality of the product is one of the most important things, and Twitter lacked that, one thing was the product had nothing so great in it and it had very less users, so nobody really found it useful. But Twitter really faced this problem well, they made sure users get mails from Twitter in their inbox almost every week, so when there was a new follower, they used immediately go to their profile and check out who it was, so this improved interactions on Twitter by a hell lot, which was crucial for its growth.

Another way Twitter built its network was by allowing integration of its service on to other already grown networks such as Facebook and Orkut, so even though the usage was Twitter was low, they tried to make the maximum of that. So from this I can prove that my advice on have a presence everywhere isn’t wrong, create an account on all of the big networks and make sure to build an influential presence.

Get big people to use your service

Any business is set to have a boost in demand if any famous celebrity uses his or her service. This of course has got great effect for an internet business, but getting a celebrity to use your service isn’t as easy as eating a piece of cake, either you pay him to endorse you product for millions of dollars that is or just forget about it thinking that it was a wild dream.

Twitter did this while not spending a single penny, how let me tell you, back in 2007 there were many things happening in Twitter some are things like fake celebrity accounts which got a lot of attention within Twitter and a lot of attention to Twitter within the media, so what I feel is Twitter’s officials themselves created so many fake accounts and were running them on their own.

So this shows the innovation used by Twitter in its marketing, I really don’t mean that you must follow the exact same thing, but there is a lot to learn from this example. I have seen a lot of blogs use others names and benefit through, maybe you can use one of that.

Be controversial

I suppose 60% of Twitter’s growth was due to the various controversies it was part off, and mainly the ones which involved celebrities and politicians. Honestly speaking, Twitter itself wasn’t a part of any of those controversies, but its high profile users were, and this is something Twitter took advantage off.

Twitter has become a dangerous tool for celebrities, it had cost an Indian minister his job and a star his reputation built over a life time, and there is nothing fishy about this, stars and politicians are followed by everyone including the media, so whatever they tweet its sure to come into limelight.

But before Twitter accounts of celebrities came into media attention, there were a few fishy things going on inside Twitter itself, I feel that Twitter used to monitor celebrity tweets and used to purposely generate media attention when they discover something controversial. This was a great resource for promotion and as soon as something like this broke out, it used to fill the news with the word ‘twitter’ or ‘tweeted’.

Extra advantages to biggies, developers and marketers

From the beginning, Twitter knew that they’ll grow only if other high profile users comment publicly on its service, but they couldn’t use any sort of tricks with this. A few months ago Twitter used to show a list of recommended  Tweeters to new users as soon as they sign up (Don’t know if its still there) and the recommended tweeters are more often big companies and sites such as Techcrunch, Mashable and Dell.

So when Twitter started to provide such things, these big blogs and companies started to use it well and also started placing their badges on their sites. And I also feel that Dell and Twitter had some sort of secret deal according to which Twitter helps them create an influential account and help them build some sales on Twitter and it return Dell had to announce in public, the number of sales they generate via Twitter, this caused a hell lot of buzz and Twitter was flooded with marketers and bloggers overnight.

Twitter was already pretty famous by the time and in a few days there were many articles on Twitter and how to guides as well on many MMO and internet blogs. Twitter took the maximum out of this and started off with their badges and buttons to place on websites and this was sure to boost its presence and at the same time they also opened up their API for developers.

There is one policy in internet marketing which I believe in that is, if you own a blog target visitors first and if you own an internet business target bloggers. The way they promoted this also has something to learn about, they promoted their API with the help of developer conferences which were held all around the world and they showcased their badges and buttons in other conferences and meetups.

Integrate with other network

They say that successful businesses are those who keep their rivals closer than friends and use this at the right time, and Twitter is one fine example for this. They kept good relations with Facebook, Orkut and Google and at the right time they got their streams integrated with them, making it one of the worlds most popular networks.

For your blog or business you don’t need such big relations, but a few people in your niche will be more than enough, in this saturated blogosphere you can grow only with the help of joint ventures and partnerships.

On to our readers

This is actually the second time I’m writing a marketing case study on a famous company and I really hope that you’ll find this useful, if you have anything to disagree with or any suggestion or opinion feel free to use the comments below.

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