Exclusiveness to Drive Twitter Usage

banging on about advertising, marketing and social media

28 January 2009 2 Comments

I’m a Twitter user. I wouldn’t say I was an early user but an earlier user than most. What I’m seeing is that there is a rapidly increasing number of brands, bloggers, bands using Twitter as well. I’ll term this group ‘fan cravers’ – those that rely on fans to survive.

This isn’t new. We saw this on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a number of other social networks. However, in the case of the other social networks, most of the fan cravers jumped on once the social network had proved to be popular and established as mainstream.

Twitter is not mainstream yet we still have a number of fan cravers establishing themselves and putting a lot of energy into making it work. We can see this through Mashable’s 40 Best Twitter Brands. And why do they work on Twitter? Because they are giving users information that they can’t get anywhere else – inside information, new developments, updates, personal responses.

One of the best examples of this exclusiveness was seen by Brisbane band, The Grates. They sent out these messages today:

This is a brilliant way to engage Twitter users – giving them something of value that they can’t get anywhere else. Couple this with entertaining photos, updates and random musings and why wouldn’t I want to follow?

The brilliant thing about accounts such as The Grates is that they are not only growing The Grates fanbase but also Twitter’s fanbase. As the majority of Australians are not currently on Twitter, the lure of prizes, interaction and information of adored fan cravers will encourage new users to get involved so they don’t miss out.

We’ve already seen Twitter spike rapidly in the last six months. If we see more fan cravers delivering this exclusive content via Twitter this number will only continue to rise more dramatically.

2 Comments »

m a t t b o w e n said:

Nath, I’m on the fence here mate. I agree that its great brands and bands are jumping on the wagon and promoting social networks as a cost-efficient way of getting rcognition and building their ‘fan base’ but I must admit that its the consumerism and branding that is most unappealing also. I’m forever rejecting requests by blanket ‘twitbranders’ who want to add me solely for the purpose of marketing. There must be a line to draw in the sand, I’m just not sure where it is yet. Perhaps there needs to be a more secure network, but I don’t know how this would work either.

I’m in a lost state Nath, perhaps you can shed some light. I saw MySpace go down the same channel and its the one reason why I’m no longer a member. I find Facebook is much more effective in keeping out the blatant branding (using groups and fan pages as the main ad channel) and the friend requests I receive are genuine 9 out of 10 times.

How do we balance it?

# 29 January 2009 at 6:51 am

Nathan Bush said:

@Matt – I hear you loud and clear on this. I’ve had the same experience. I’ve found that as the networks evolve I’ve been able to sort them into groups of ’social networks’. So for instance, I use MySpace purely for music news and friends, I use Twitter predominantly for work related contacts and Facebook is reserved for friends that I’ve had a beer with. That’s where I found the strength in each network lies for me.

However, as in this example with The Grates, if a fan craver croses over to a channel where I would not normally accept them (in this case The Grates would normally belong in MySpace) BUT offers valuable content/entertainment that I can’t get elsewhere then I will accept as I can see the value. I think that’s the challenge for marketers – not just using these channels but delivering value for the user.

Take a look at @Pizza_Dominos. I’m not going to be too harsh because they have just started on Twitter. However, they’ll have to start offering value to their followers as at the moment it is very one way conversation with no value offered.