Social media consultant Ian Lyons told us: “Twitter can data mine information like never before.”
“Henry Ford’s famous quote is, ‘If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse’, but what people really wanted was a faster way to get from A to B.’”
“That could’ve been a car, or a horse or a plane. Henry Ford didn’t have the tools we have now to listen to the market to understand their needs.”
“Fundamentally, it’s a shift from interrupting people to sell them your wares to helping people to buy.”
“No one likes being sold to. Once you can make a shift to thinking about who benefits from your product and service, get to know the customer and get an answer to the key question ‘who would miss us if we were gone?’, Twitter is a great tool.”
So what do people use Twitter for? Intriguingly, Global Web Index says that user habits are changing, with people becoming more passive.
Just 51% of active users have posted a Tweet in the past month, according to the consultancy.
“This means that half the active user base is just reading, reacting or using Twitter as a source of discovery,” says Global Web Index. “The caricature of the average Twitter user banally talking about what they had for breakfast is dying.”
Twitter isn’t for everyone and there are many businesses that use it in clumsy, ill-advised ways. But one thing is clear – if you haven’t even considered Twitter as part of your marketing mix, you are at risk of being overtaken by those that do.
