Twitter Is the 'Five-Tool Player' of the Social Web

And It Deserves a Paycheck

Posted by Josh Bernoff on 03.11.09 @ 11:08 AM

Josh Bernoff

Baseball scouts rating talent are vainly searching for the "five-tool player" -- a player like Willie Mays or Ken Griffey Jr. who's great at fielding, throwing, base running, hitting for average and hitting for power. There aren't many.

Social technologies, like baseball players, typically only do one or two things well. Except for the flexibility of online communities, we haven't had a "five-tool player" that marketers can tap in highly versatile ways. But now we do. It's Twitter. And now that it's reached about 5 million accounts, it's time to pay attention.

In reviewing corporate Twitter applications (see report "Using Twitter For Groundswell Objectives") we found five main ways companies can use Twitter. (If you've read "Groundswell," you'll recognize the five-objectives framework.) With Twitter you can:

Derek Jeter

Do research.
Monitor what people are saying about your brand right now. Try it: Go to search.twitter.com and type in "Swiffer." As I write this @d33ann is bragging about how she tidied her apartment and @adtothebone suggests they should rebrand it for men as the "dusterminator." Try it with your own brand. Locked in those tweets are sentiment, volume and insight about your brand, your competitors, and your category.

Talk to people.
Just get a Twitter account for your company and start twittering. You'll get more followers if you offer something useful. For example, Dell has sold more than a million dollars worth of overstock computers through its @DellOutlet Twitter feed, which has 137,000 followers.

Energize your brand advocates.
Zappos has a page that shows who's tweeting about it. Unlike Skittles, this isn't a stunt; Zappos is engaged with its customers on Twitter and they're responding. Do you know who loves your brand?

Support your customers. Comcast is digging itself out from under a poor service reputation one customer at a time; @comcastcares will respond if you tweet about challenges with your Comcast service and will solve your problem in 140 characters or refer you to people who can help.

Embrace customer feedback.
H&R block asks its Twitter followers about potential product upgrades, for example.

Twitter users love it, and now companies are learning to love it, too. Of course, we're all wondering if it can make any money for itself. It's as if Derek Jeter had delighted fans and the Steinbrenners with his five tools but didn't get paid for it!

Where's the Twitter business model? Search. David Berkowitz noted right here on DigitalNext that Twitter is now putting a search box on the Twitter home page. Joe Marchese, president of SocialVibe, suggested to me in a conversation at the AAAAs that Twitter search is about to get sophisticated enough to base a business model on. John Battelle, Michael Arrington, the San Jose Mercury News and Ad Age have all noticed that Twitter search is worth watching.

I think Twitter will improve its search analytics and turn them into a paid service. (Twitter search will still be free, but super-duper analytical Twitter search will have a charge.) Furthermore, ads on Twitter searches would be more relevant, easier to sell, and more easily tolerated than ads on Twitter itself. So look for Twitter to sell ads on its search page.

After all, a five-tool player this good deserves a paycheck.

~ ~ ~
Josh Bernoff is the co-author of "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," a comprehensive analysis of corporate strategy for dealing with social technologies like blogs, social networks and wikis, and is a VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research. He blogs at blogs.forrester.com/groundswell.

5 Comments

By manobyte | Kentwood, MI March 11, 2009 03:32:27 pm:

Great article Josh! As business begin monitoring the Social Web including Twitter they will continue to realize the great value that it has to transform their organizations. A major challenge that many organizations are running into is that they do not have the needed skill sets in house to be successful on the Social Web.

Kevin Dean
http://www.twitter.com/manobyte

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By nickkinports | Chicago, IL March 11, 2009 07:17:29 pm:

Josh,

You may be right about the way Twitter plans to get some positive cashflow. The issue always prevalent with a service like Twitter is the risk of attrition when advertising is injected at the wrong level. I love the concept of paid ads on the search pages ONLY.

http://www.twitter.com/admaven

http://admaven.blogspot.com

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By iseguban | chicago, IL March 11, 2009 11:18:26 pm:

Great article! This is only the beginning and we should expect more companies to do the same. They can't ignore it for too much longer. The companies and brands that do jump on board sooner and learn how to use this will help build a reputation of really understanding their customers and be considered as innovaters in social media.

Ismael
http://ismaelseguban3.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/ismael3

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By Rwallters | Owings Mills, MD March 12, 2009 11:37:26 am:

Josh,

Great article on the how brands should be utilizing Twitter in reaching their customers. I think it's very interesting however, that it took something like Twitter to get people to realize that their consumers are talking and that they need to be engaged in the conversations. Your five points are right on target, but need not, and SHOULD not only be applied to the "Twitter-verse"

As you pointed out with the Groundswell reference these objectives should be applied across the social media landscape. Wherever people are talking, you should listen. I am a huge advocate for Twitter, but I hope that people do not think it is a one-stop shop and they can address all of their social media by setting up an account.

I wrote a blog discussing a very similar approach to getting your brand started in social media. I'll leave the link below.

~Rusty Walters
Word of Mouth Coordinator
MGH, INC.
Http://www.twitter.com/russwalters

Blog Link: http://mghwom.com/blog/?p=253

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By jestebanc | Prosper, TX April 22, 2009 02:44:14 pm:

That's a great, simple way to put it.

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