This week's post comes from Elisa Peimer, one of Oren Hope's founding partners.
I’ll be the first to admit that I just didn’t get Twitter. What good was posting a little blurb about yourself and what you’re doing that was no more than 140 characters? Quite honestly, I thought, who cares?
But I got sucked into marketing peer pressure and joined up. I found a couple of friends and colleagues and started following them. The first couple of days I spent thinking “what am I going to post on Twitter?” like it was some kind of school assignment. But as I eased into it, I’ve found that I’ve started using it like a tap on the shoulder, a simple “here’s what’s going on,” without having to write a whole blog entry about it. It’s allowed me to keep our company, our blog, and myself at the top of people’s minds. And I actually think that’s the biggest benefit of Twitter. We all know how bombarded we all are with messages and information. Twitter is a simple, quick, and relatively unobtrusive way to keep yourself in the mix.
Some companies have been able to use Twitter in really inventive ways. When I first joined up, my friend @sharongoldman, a marketing/writing colleague, suggested I check out the Twitter feed of Tony, the CEO of Zappos. Zappos, the online shoe store? Why would I care what he had to say? It turns out Tony has over a half million people following his Twitter feed. His tweets have a good combination of information about his company, interspersed with general comments about his life. It puts a real face on the head of Zappos, and makes you feel like you know him. Which, in turn, makes you more likely to check out his company. It’s marketing, but it’s not done in a dry, “marketing” kind of way. It’s personal and social. And fun to read.
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