Marcomm

The “App Gap”: Mobile Apps Overtake All Others in Digital Media Consumption

Phillip Nones Business, Demographics, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media , , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile apps overtaking other digital media consumptionIt was bound to happen.

The bulk of time Americans are spending on digital media … is now happening on mobile applications.

According to data released this past week by Internet and digital analytics firm comScore, the combined time that people expend using digital media breaks down as follows:

  • Mobile apps: ~52% of all time spent online
  • Mobile web surfing: ~8%
  • Desktop: ~40%

Apps are clearly in the driver’s seat – particularly in the mobile realm.  In fact, comScore estimates that apps account for 7 out of every 8 minutes spent on mobile devices.

On smartphones, the app usage is ~88% of all time spent, whereas on tablets, it’s ~82%.

This doesn’t mean that app usage is spread evenly throughout the population of people who are online.  Far from it.  Only about one-third of people download one app per month or more.  (The average smartphone user is downloading about three apps per month.)

The inevitable conclusion:  App usage is highly concentrated among a subset of the population.

Indeed, the 7% most active smartphone owners account for almost half of all the download activity during any given month.

But even if most users aren’t downloading all that many apps … they are certainly engaged with the ones they do have on their devices:  comScore reports that nearly 60% are using apps every day.

Here again, the data show that usage levels are much higher among smartphone users than they are with tablet users (where only about one quarter of the people use apps daily).

Where they’re spending their time is also interesting.  Well over 40% of all app time spent on smartphones is with a user’s single most used app.  (Facebook takes top honors — of course.)

And if you combine social networking, games and Internet radio, you’ve pretty much covered the waterfront when it comes to app usage.

When you think about it, none of this should come as much surprise.  We’re a mobile society – hourly, daily, monthly and yearly.  It only makes sense that most online time is going to be happening when people are away from their home or their desk, now that it’s so easy to be connected so easily from even the tiniest mobile devices.

And speaking of “easy” … is it really any wonder why people would flock to apps?  It’s less hassle to open up an app for news or information rather than searching individual sites via mobile.  People simply don’t have the patience for that anymore.

Pinterest: Will it ever become a male hangout?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Social Media , , , , , , , , , ,

Pinterest logoHere’s a statistic about social media platform Pinterest that will probably surprise few people:  As of June 2014 statistics reported by digital analytics firm comScore, its user base is more than 70% female.

… Which means that Pinterest remains the most “gender imbalanced” of all the major social media platforms.

For the record, other social platforms have far more gender balance among their user bases – with at least 45% being male:

  • SnapChat:  52% male
  • Tumblr:  52%
  • Twitter:  48%
  • Facebook:  47%
  • Instagram:  45%
  • Pinterest:  28%

But here’s the thing:  Pinterest has been trying mightily hard to attract more male participants, but the proportional figures have yet to budge.

This points to a fundamental challenge.  It’s very difficult to change the image and atmospherics of a social platform once they’ve become so firmly entrenched.

And it’s not just a question of image.  The platform’s content says it all.

Jill Sherman, vice president of social and content strategy at marketing communications firm DigitasLBi, puts it this way:

“If you pull up Pinterest and go into any content section, you will see purses, dresses and women’s shoes — because women are the user base.  When 70% of the users are female, then 70% of the content is going to be female-oriented.” 

Pinterest for menHope springs eternal, however.  Pinterest is continuing its effort to attract more men.

Or at least … to make the site more “guy friendly” when a new member goes there signs up.  This means making sure to show items more stereotypically catering to men’s interests rather than things like women’s fashion items.

But how to get men to the stage of even signing up?  That challenge falls to Pinterest’s new “head of brand” – who just happens to be a man.

David Rubin
David Rubin

He’s David Rubin, erstwhile senior vice president of marketing at Unilever, where he worked on marketing the Axe brand of men’s body care products.

Mr. Rubin might wish to start his tenure by asking himself what would bring him to engage with Pinterest more … because according to news reports, Rubin had posted only 22 items on Pinterest prior to joining the company.

DigitasLBi’s Jill Sherman sees a challenge for Pinterest that is fundamentally basic.  “They haven’t cracked the motivation code:  How to attract men and keep them using the platform beyond saving things that pique their interest.”

I agree – and I’d go a step further.  Convincing people to visit Pinterest to find or view something of interest “feels” like a function a search engine such as Google Images is doing quite well already.  Who needs “yet another place” to tap into that functionality?  Especially if one is a male of the species?

In order for Pinterest to evolve beyond where it is today, perhaps it needs to look at what Facebook and others have been doing to create communities and interaction beyond just pretty pictures and videos.

It could be a tall order.

Internet Properties: No Longer an American Monopoly

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The amount of translated content is also showing big-time growth.

languageAccording to an analysis by venture capitalist and Internet industry specialist Mary Meeker, in 2013 nine of the ten top global Internet properties were U.S.-based.

For the record, they were as follows (in order of ranking):

  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Facebook
  • Yahoo
  • Wikipedia
  • Amazon
  • Ask
  • Glam Media
  • Apple

Only China-based Tencent cracked the Top Ten from outside the United States — and it just barely made it in as #10 in the rankings.

And yet … the same Top 10 Internet properties had nearly 80% of their users located outside America.

With such a disparity between broad-based Internet usage and concentrated Internet ownership, the picture was bound to change.

And boy, has it changed quickly:  Barely a year later — as of March 2014 — the Top 10 listing now contains just six American-based companies.

Ask, Glam Media and Apple have all fallen off the list, replaced by three more China-based properties:  Alibaba, Baidu and Sohu.

Paralleling this trend is another one:  a sharp increase in the degree to which businesses are providing content in multiple languages.

For websites that offer some form of translated content, half of them are offering it in at least six languages.  That’s double the number of languages that were being offered a year earlier.

And for a quarter of these firms, translated content is available in 15 or more languages.

What are the most popular languages besides English?  Spanish, French, Italian and German are popular — not a great surprise there.  But other languages that are becoming more prevalent include Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

In fact, the average volume of translated content has ballooned nearly 90% within just the past year.

The growing accuracy of computer-based translation modules — including surprisingly good performance in “idiomatic” language — is certainly helping the process along.

Moreover, when a major site like Facebook reports that its user base in France grew from 1.4 million to 2.4 million within just three months of offering its French-language site, it’s just more proof that the world may be getting smaller … but native language still remains a key to maximizing business success.

It’s one more reminder that for any company which hopes to compete in a transnational world, offering content in other languages isn’t just an option, but a necessity in order to build and maintain a strategic advantage.

Charting Social Media’s “Maturity Continuum”

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary , , , , , , , ,

Social Media lineupAs social media has crept more and more into the fabric of life for so many people, it’s only natural that social scientists and marketers are thinking about the wider implications.

One of these thinkers is someone whose viewpoints I respect a good deal.  Social media and online/search über-strategist Gord Hotchkiss has come up with a way of looking at social media vehicles that he dubs the “Maturity Continuum.”

According to Hotchkiss, the Maturity Continuum is made up of four levels of increasing social media “stickiness” — meaning how relevant and important the social platforms are to people’s daily lives and routines.

Specifically, these four levels are:

The Fad Phase — This is when people start using a social media platform because it’s the bright shiny thing … and “everyone else” in their circle is doing so, too.  This dynamic is commonly found among early adopters — you know, the folks who try out new things because … they’re new.

Gord Hotchkiss
Gord Hotchkiss

Of course, early adopters don’t necessarily stick around.  A new social platform has to have some sort of “there there” – to deliver some measure of functional benefit – or else it won’t keep fad users around for long.

Also important at this early stage is the aspect of uniqueness and novelty — which is always important among this group of people who tend to be higher on the ego and narcissism scale.

Making a Statement — If a social platform makes it through the pure novelty gauntlet, it continues to be used because it makes a statement about the user.  In the case of social media, it’s often as much about the technology as it is the functionality.

Thinking about a platform like FourSquare, here you have social tool that’s probably at this level of maturity.  With FourSquare, there may be a few utilitarian reasons for using it — getting vouchers or other “free stuff” from restaurants and bars — but it’s probably a lot more about “making that statement.”

A Useful Tool — At this point on the Maturity Continuum, here’s where a social platform breaks into a more practical realm.  Going beyond the novelty and ego aspects, users find that the platform is a highly beneficial tool from a functionality standpoint — perhaps better than any other one out there for facilitating certain activities.

Thinking about a social platform like LinkedIn in this context, it’s easy to see how that particular one has done so well.

A Platform of Choice — This is the highest level of social media maturity, where users engage — and continue to engage — with a social platform because they have become so familiar with it.

At this level, it becomes quite a challenge to dislodge a social platform, even if “newer, better” choices come along.  Once social habits have become established and a large critical mass of users is established, it can be very difficult to change the behavior.

Facebook is “Exhibit A” in this regard:  Despite near-weekly reports of issues and controversies about the platform, people continue to hang in there with it.

Thinking about other social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, SnapChat and Pinterest, it’s interesting to speculate on where they currently fall on the “maturity meter.”

I’d venture to say that YouTube has made it to the highest level … SnapChat is still residing in the early “fad” stage … while Pinterest and Instagram are transitioning between “making a statement” and being “a useful tool.”

Where Twitter resides … is anyone’s guess.  I for one am still wondering just how Twitter fits into the greater scheme of social — and how truly “consequential” it is in the fabric of most people’s social lives.

What are your perspectives on the Maturity Continuum in social media?  If you have opinions one way or the other about the long-term staying power of certain platforms, please share them with other readers here.

Tough Nut: Shoehorning Social Media Practices into an Existing Corporate Culture

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary , , , , ,

managing social mediaIn late May 2014, Business Insider published an article about the processes by which corporations and their brands plan and manage their social media efforts.

It elicited derision and snorts of laughter in response.

Why?  For starters, the story sported this irreverent headline:  “We Got a Look Inside the 45-day Planning Process that Goes Into Creating a Single Corporate Tweet.”

And inside the article, it was revealed that it took the four-person agency team that handles the social media program for the Président Cheese brand 45 days to take a single tweet from conception to published reality.

For the record, here is the tweet as it finally appeared on Twitter:

President Cheese tweet

On the one hand, it seems patently ridiculous that a single tweet should take so long to germinate, come to fruition and be published.  At that pace, the Président Cheese brand is going to be left in the dust.

[To add further insult, the social media accounts in question had only ~100 Twitter followers and ~220 Facebook likes at the time.]

But let’s look more closely.  The tweet is recommending serving camembert cheese at room temperature for better flavor, rather than straight out of the refrigerator.

It’s a mild enough suggestion … but it has potential negative implications concerning food safety — or at least the perception of such.

When one is a brand sold nationally, such considerations aren’t merely theoretical; a simple tweet can be turned into a cudgel to beat over the head of the brand in the case of a lawsuit over food sanitation.

Considered in those terms, it no longer seems quite so strange that it took the MarComm agency so many days to go from ideation through the review-and-approval process to get to publication.

And the four agency people involved?  They’re the team assigned to the brand’s social media account, and the full group’s involvement was a single meeting to discuss the upcoming month’s social media topics.

It turns out that “planned” topics represent about one-third of the Président Cheese activity on social media platforms; the rest of the postings are done on the fly, responding to customer chatter, answering questions or weighing in on other comments, and responding to food trend news or other developments that tie in with the world of food, hospitality and entertaining.

So, like so many other factors in the business world and in life, the 45-day tweet isn’t a black-and-white issue of failure; it’s shades of gray.

Now that we’ve seen both sides of the coin, I think it’s still legitimate to question the length of time and the amount of energy required to post a single tweet.

Several ways to correct this come to mind.  One is for brands to stay away from any topics that might expose them to the risk of public relations problems or potential legal repercussions.

But in a world where brands are competing against an endless crowd of other social posters … that seems like a pretty sure ticket to irrelevance and social media oblivion.

At the same time, any MarComm agency or in-house social media department needs to adhere to some practical standards of vetting so that some ill-conceived post doesn’t blow up in the company’s face.

The sweet spot — or at least the proper balance between interest, efficiency and prudence — would be creating a streamlined client approval process involving only one or two people (plus backups) who are sufficiently attuned to the brand’s market position and the best ways to advance it and protect it.

Oh, and the team assigned to the responsibility needs to be available 24/7 for vetting purposes (hence the need for backup personnel who are at-the-ready).

It may be a pesky responsibility, but in the “always-on” world of marketing today, it’s really the only way to go if one wishes to participate on the interactive playing field.

The alternative is a tweet that takes weeks to be published … and I doubt anyone is ever going to be satisfied with that.

Twitter: The social platform that’s less important today than it was yesterday.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Twitter losing lusterTwitter hasn’t mattered to very many people for a very long time.

Of course, for some it hasn’t mattered even from its inception. But when we start reading about Twitter’s most avid users and how they’ve begun to drift away from using the social platform like they’ve done in the past … you know that more than just the atmospherics are changing.

A case in point about this evolution is an article that was published in late April by The Atlantic titled “A Eulogy for Twitter.”

The article’s authors, Adrienne LaFrance and Robinson Meyer, begin their piece by writing:

“We’ve been trying to figure out the moment Twitter turned, retracing tweets to see whether there was something specific that soured the platform.  

“Something is wrong on Twitter. And people are noticing. Or at least, the kind of people we hang around with on Twitter are noticing … audience-obsessed, curious, newsy … The thing is, its users are less active than they once were. Twitter says these changes reflect a more streamlined experience, but we have a different theory: Twitter is entering its twilight.”

Those are strong words. But the authors back up their assertions by noting that while people may still be using Twitter, many of them are no longer “hanging out” there. And that’s because there’s less “there there” to sustain once highly-engaged Twitter users.

The perceptions of Twitter’s value have been changing because of three key precepts which are now being proven out as “fictions,” according to LaFrance and Meyer.

What are those “fictions”?

  • The belief that other people in the “Twitterverse” are actually paying attention — or at least that a decent portion of one’s followers are seeing the tweets. 
  • The belief that competent and compelling tweeting will increase a person’s Twitter follower base. 
  • The confidence of knowing that there is a useful potential audience beyond current followers, so that the time and energy spent on the platform will pay dividends. 

None of these premises has turned out to be correct in the long-haul. Instead, the following stark realities fly in the face of all the hope (or hype):

  • Twitter is positively stuffed with “spam” accounts. In fact, the median number of followers for a Twitter account is … exactly one. Even if a few of those accounts are actually “legit,” of what value are they to anyone? 
  • Twitter’s year-over-year growth rate has fallen significantly since 2011.

And here’s another clear indication of how Twitter has morphed into something quite different from its original character. Today, Twitter is more likely to be merely a place to promote content published someplace else in cyberspace, simply providing quick links over to that content.

Whereas in the past, journalists and celebs and others were posting statements and opinions — and replying to or retweeting the posts of others — now it’s more likely to be canned promotion and little more.

… Which sets up a downward spiral, because followers aren’t seeing anything particularly new or interesting that they’re not already encountering elsewhere. So interest wanes … leading to reduced participation … leading to even less consideration of Twitter’s “worth” as a social platform.

This phenomenon of “professionalized accounts” means little more than being a bulletin board of scheduled tweets and broadcast links, resulting in collective yawns all over the place.

Of course, there’s one aspect of Twitter than continues its joyride unabated: hate speech and profanity. But that’s the sort of content many people would just as soon avoid encountering.

LaFrance and Meyer conclude that the world may have “outgrown” Twitter. They’re not happy by that turn of events, writing:

“For a platform that was once so special, it would be sad and a little condescending to conclude that Twitter is simply something we’ve outgrown. After all, the platform has always been shaped by the people who congregate there. So if it’s no longer any fun, surely we’re at least partly to blame.”

The authors go on to note:

“Twitter has done for social publishing what AOL did for e-mail. But nobody has AOL accounts anymore … [Today,] Twitter feels closed off — choked — in a way that makes us want to explore somewhere else for a while.”

It may not be time for Twitter’s eulogy. But there are many who don’t see much of a second act for the social platform, either.

By the way … where are those “somewhere elses” in social media that LaFrance and Meyer allude to? Try Snapchat, Instagram … even LinkedIn.  That’s where the interesting action is happening these days.

Online Marketplaces: The Brightest Stars in the e-Commerce Galaxy?

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

online commerceGiven a choice between buying a branded product from Amazon and a similarly priced one from an e-commerce store on the brand’s own website, which purchase option do most people choose?

In most cases, people opt for Amazon.

And why wouldn’t they? Online marketplaces like Amazon devote the vast bulk of their energies to removing the obstacles to purchasing products and improving the overall buyer experience.

The e-commerce stores on most company or brand websites don’t get nearly the same degree of laser-focused attention.

So it comes as little surprise that as online e-commerce continues to evolve, marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Grainger are outpacing general e-commerce websites in terms of their growth and popularity.

Let’s face it, compared to most standard e-commerce sites, e-marketplace sites do a superior job dealing with the four major customer drivers:  selection, value, convenience and user confidence.

It shows in the growth statistics. Looking back over the past decade, Amazon’s yearly growth has averaged around 32%.  Compare those stats to standard sites … and there isn’t much of a comparison.

If anything, the future looks even brighter for marketplaces. With the increased adoption of mobile devices for online shopping, dedicated mobile apps from marketplaces like eBay and Amazon are making buying by phone easier and more convenient than ever.

Their mobile apps iron out the “payment kinks and concerns” that have bothered some mobile purchasers. These apps solve the potential security problem of having to input payment or address/shipping information into the phone when the purchase is made.

The rise of online marketplaces isn’t limited to just Amazon and eBay, either. Numerous other robust e-commerce marketplaces in both the B-to-C and B-to-B realm are thriving, too – not just in the United States but in the developing world also.

The global aspect is quite important, actually. Marketplace e-commerce may represent only about one-third of total online sales in the U.S. … but in China, such marketplaces are capturing closer to 80% of the online business.

It helps that these marketplaces offer many PayPal-like payment options. This solves the problems of payment when fewer people overseas use credit cards for purchases. (In China, less than 5% of online customers pay via credit card.)

These developments don’t presage the end of “conventional” e-commerce sites, of course. But they do suggest that companies should seriously consider online marketplaces as a prime channel for getting their products into the hands of end-users.

After all, it’s only natural that customers are going to take the “path of least resistance” – making the buying process as effortless as possible.

Online marketplaces have that game down to a science. No one does it better.

Affluent consumers around the world: More similar than different.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Demographics, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

Moods and mindsets converge.

worldwide affluent consumers

As the world becomes more interconnected, it’s having an impact on the mindsets of marketplaces. A confluence of perspectives appears to be happening.

A good case in point is affluent consumers. The idea that rich or affluent people are something of a homogeneous segment was put forth about 10 years ago in Robert Frank’s book Richistan.

The author contended that affluent consumers are united by shared characteristics and shared experiences that are becoming progressively more distinct from middle-class consumers.

In fact, he posited that Affluents had implicitly become their own country (“Richistan”).

Since then, we’ve had a global recession or two … along with social unrest on nearly every continent. Have the sociological trend lines changed?

A recent analysis of results from an Ipsos MediaCT survey of affluent consumers in ~50 countries suggests not.

Commenting on the research findings, author  and journalist Stephen Kraus writes, “Affluents continue to form a globally coherent segment marked by cross-border similarities in attitudes, lifestyles and marketplace preferences … this analysis also finds a remarkably consistent demographic, psychographic and media profile among Affluents around the world.”

Regarding the consumption of media, Ipsos found that affluent consumers are using mobile devices and digital media far more than before – not at all surprising since this segment is also noted for being early adopters of new technologies and products.

But even with the big growth of mobile and digital, Affluents’ use of traditional media has declined only modestly. Overall, the segment is more engaged in media than ever before, with the newer forms of media usage “layered” on top of older ones.

For companies that market “high-end” products and services to the affluent segment, it’s actually becoming easier to apply the same messaging and marketing across multiple countries and cultures – with allowances for language differences being made, of course.

Despite all the convergence that’s happened, some attitudinal qualities of affluent consumes continue to distinguish themselves between different cultures, however. For example, the Ipsos survey found these differing characteristics:

  • Growth in luxury purchases is strongest among affluent consumers in the Asia-Pacific region.
  • Latin American affluent consumers are particularly enthusiastic users of social media – and international media in general.
  • American affluent consumers are strong in spending on recreational activities such as golf, tennis and skiing.

And European Affluents?  Well, they’re more subdued in their economic optimism – and their spending – at the moment.

 

Fast Fade: Unpaid brand posts on Facebook are getting rarer by the day.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lower ReachIt was just a matter of time.

Once Facebook ramped up its advertising program in order to monetize its platform and mollify its investors, unpaid posts by companies and brands were sure to be the collateral damage.

Sure enough, the recent monthly stats show that the “organic reach” of unpaid content published on company and brand pages on Facebook has been cut in half from where it was just a short time ago.

To illustrate, look at these stark figures gathered in an analysis by Ogilvy of 100+ country-level brand pages measuring the average reach of unpaid posts:

  • October 2013: 12.2%
  • November 2013: 11.6%
  • December 2013: 8.8%
  • January 2014: 7.7%
  • February 2014: 6.2%

What these stats show is that within the span of less than six months, the average reach of unpaid brand posts dropped by nearly 50%. 

To go even further, an anonymous source familiar with Facebook’s long-term strategy is claiming that its new algorithm could ultimately reduce the reach of organic posts to 2% or less.

Actually, the reason for the squeeze is more than just Facebook’s desire to increase advertising revenue.

Here’s a dynamic that’s also significant:  A Pew Research study conducted in mid-2013 found that the typical adult American Facebook user has around 340 friends.

That average is up nearly 50% from approximately 230 friends in 2010.

Of course, more friends mean more status updates eligible for feeds … and Facebook’s not going to display them all to everyone — even if it wanted to.

Also, Facebook users “like” an average of 40 company, brand, group or celebrity pages each, according to a 2013 analysis done by Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm.  That translates into an average of ~1,440 updates every month.

Compare those figures to five years ago, when the average number of page “likes” was fewer than five … yielding fewer than 25 monthly updates on average.

Clearly, there’s no way Facebook is going to to be able to display all of these updates to followers.  So … the content is squeezed some more.

The final nail in the coffin is the rise in “promoted” posts – the ones that brands pay dollars to promote. It’s only natural that Facebook is going to give those posts priority treatment.

Thus, the hat-trick combination of more friends, more likes and more promoted posts is what’s causing “organic” brand posts to go the way of the dodo bird.

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before a major social platform like Facebook would seek to monetize its program in a big way.

In some respects, it’s amazing that the free ride lasted as long as it actually did …

The Continuing Ambivalence about Twitter

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing Communications, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Or is it more a division of the house?

ambivalenceOf all of the social media platforms that have taken root, the one that seems to cause the most divided opinions among the marketing and communication specialists I know is Twitter.

… And these are the folks who have been diligent about “following the script” for crafting tweets that are interesting, informative, and get noticed.

Each social platform has its strong and weak attributes, of course … but I hear far more mixed views about Twitter than I do about Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn.

This is amply illustrated in a recent discussion that was started on LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing Group, of which I’m a member.

Joel Harrison, Editor-in-Chief of B2BMarketing.net, posed this question to the group’s members:

“If Twitter ceased to exist tomorrow, would we all be better off?”

This rather provocative query elicited a range of reactions pro and con – which was to be expected.

However, I was a little surprised that the comments were weighted roughly two-thirds negative about Twitter versus positive.

Remember, this is a discussion group made up of marketing professionals — people you’d expect to be keen on pretty much any established social platform that has an extensive following for marketing purposes.

… Which, even if you discount the ~30% of accounts that “fake, faux and farcical” – still makes Twitter qualify as one of the leading social media platforms.

But consider these comments about Twitter posted by members of the B2B Marketing Group on LinkedIn:

“16 characters solve this dilemma: ‘Don’t take part.’”

 “I once read a tweet that said, ‘This is the generation that had nothing to say, and said it.’ Sums it up pretty well.”

 “My target audiences … have not mentioned that they prefer to communicate on that channel, so until that happens, there isn’t much going on.”

 “I like the old BBC mission: ‘Entertain, inform and educate.’ If you don’t do any of that, I ain’t following.”

 “Useful as an additional channel for customer service and sharing experiences – if the customer wants it.”

 “It depends on the industry and the target audience.”

 “As a marketer, it’s useful.  On a personal level, it annoys the hell out of me.”

These statements don’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the platform, do they?

Of course, they were posted on a business-to-business discussion board, so presumably people were commenting based on their B-to-B perspective; consumer marketing opinions are likely somewhat different.

What are your opinions about Twitter? Based on your own experience, how important and how effective has Twitter been to your marketing efforts?  Is it a critical component … or is it just one more ornament on the MarComm tree? Please share your comments for the benefit of other readers.