Conversational Media Marketing

Twitter's appeal is manifold. The first has to do with its simplicity. Twitter is a lightweight app that seeks to do one thing, connect people in a real-time way without encumbering them with lots of other functionalities.

Second is its fluidity. You can receive Tweets (as they are called) in a variety of ways -- via the web, IM and/or SMS. It's a versatile app to be sure.

Twitter first started out to be a "presence" app where users answered the question, "What are you doing?" Nowadays, hardly anyone pays attention to that tagline.

Twitter has matured into a cross between an instant messenger and a micro-blog. And, the geniuses who created it are very responsive to the user-base. As participants find other ways to use the application (the "@username" function, for example), it is outfitted to support that. Add to that the sense of community that develops as people "follow" one another.

Twitter has become the new "level playing field" that blogs once were. Back in the early days of blogging my experience was that, no matter whether you were the CEO of a large company or a kid in college, if you blogged you belonged to the same club. There was a sense of camaraderie. Today, Twitter has that same appeal.

Imagine how difficult it would be to get an audience with Guy Kawasaki, Dave Winer or Geoff Livingston, for instance. Yet, on Twitter, these guys are as accessible as anyone.

One other area of attraction is Twitter's API, which has allowed for the creation of a veritable panoply of applications and mashups. One of my favorite is TWhirl, an Adobe Air-based application that does what Twitter does, only much more elegantly.

As to making a business case for using Twitter, I can think of several:

Event updates - It's a great way to keep attendees abreast of goings on at conferences or other type of gathering.

Creating connections with colleagues (building your social graph) - Twitter, just like other forms of social networking, is a place to find other people who care about the same things as you, or who are fellow sojourners in your industry.

Strengthening your social graph - If you already have connections established with others via LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace, adding those same people to your Twitter feed is a way to strengthen the ties that bind, so to speak. Plus, the informal manner in which people connect (the Twitter "etiquette") is attractive. It's a much more personal way of connecting than, say, LinkedIn.

Announcements - Twitter is a great place to broadcast an announcement about an upcoming event or a blog post you've just written. However, don't use Twitter just for that purpose. At this juncture, unless you're contributing to and participating in the conversation on an individual, person-to-person level, most people won't pay attention to you. Participation in the way I've just described really is your price of admission.

Educate - Twitter is a tool you can use to share resources that will benefit others. Often, I share links to blog posts, articles or Web sites that I feel will be helpful to the community as a whole.

Relationship building - Marketing these days is about building relationships. (Think the "Cluetrain") Twitter is another means by which relationships can be built and trust and credibility developed.

PS: If you'd like to follow me I'll return the favor. My Twitter ID is .