Twitter recently announced through their blog that, on average, upwards of 50 million tweets are sent daily. For the less mathematically inclined, this comes to over 600 tweets per second. If you’re involved with social media marketing, the initial response is probably something along the lines of how fantastic this growth is, as it potentially allows you to reach a larger audience through your Twitter feed. At least, it would certainly indicate that more than the 5,000 average daily tweets that were being sent out in 2007 did.
But while it’s undoubtedly true that Twitter has created more opportunities for communication with others, that’s not to say that it doesn’t come with some degree of expense. Suffice to say, it should come as no surprise that businesses that have dedicated large amounts of resources to Twitter are pleased with its overall general growth. However, they should take care to remember that with its growth, there’s a strong chance that their brand message will become diluted with the large amount of other companies attempting to hop on the bandwagon, or that it will simply get lost in the noise of the millions of other tweets.
Twitter represents an appealing platform for businesses as it allows them to reach an increasingly elusive and mobile base that may not be plugged in to traditional advertising channels. Additionally, it gives them the ability to very directly establish a dialog with consumers and show that their brands aren’t just a faceless entity. However, Twitter’s growth makes both of these things increasingly difficult for two primary reasons:
1. It’s harder to effectively distribute your message. Chances are that, if a user is following more than just a small number of other streams, your tweets aren’t very likely to even be seen.
2. The growth of Twitter actually makes it more difficult to communicate with consumers. As noted, part of the platform’s appeal is in its ability to allow companies to directly speak to its customers. However, it becomes exponentially less feasible to reply to every tweet sent your way as the number of followers you have grows.
In essence, being on Twitter doesn’t just mean that you’re competing with other businesses offering the same products and services you have to offer. Rather, you’re fighting with everyone for the attention of those you’re trying to reach. Still, this isn’t to say that companies should abandon Twitter or give up hope on it. Rather, they just need to ensure they know some of the challenges they face when trying to establish themselves on it.
Written by Kenny K.
