Twitter launched their first ad on August 26th. It's a direct response to the earthquake that struck outside Washington DC on August 23rd. It was done quickly and in-house, and it takes advantage of a good story: Tweets about the quake reached New York City before the quake did. Props to Twitter for taking advantage of a timely situation to highlight the pure speed that information that happens on Twitter. When a news story breaks, I turn to Twitter first. It's where I find the biggest variety of news, links and opinions, all on one site, all before most blogs and sites have broke the story.
But, as far as this ad is concerned, it makes me wonder if Twitter knows why people use Twitter. Speed isn't why most people use Twitter. And speed isn't going to be the thing that gets non-users to sign up. People are turned on to Twitter for the back-and-forth conversation and the access to people and information.
There are obstacles to get people to sign up for Twitter. People feel they don't need another social network or site to visit, or people are worried they won't have anything to tweet about. People may picture Twitter as nothing more than a constantly refreshing list of insignificant 140 character brain dumps.
And there are ways to promote Twitter's strengths. It provides uncensored access to people and information like no other site. It features digestible bits of content that allow people to peruse headlines without having to get bogged down with a detailed article. It does feature breaking news first. Because there's so many people talking, there's not a bias that other sites may have; you get both sides of every story. And it works with other social networks, like Foursquare, Instagram and Facebook, not against them.
The lesson? While reacting fast is critical, it's more important to react smart. This ad is a one-off and if Twitter wants to get serious about advertising, they need a strategy behind their ads. Something that ties all their marketing efforts together. Without one they're going to end up with a disjointed mass of content that hurts the brand more than it helps it.
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