November 18, 200976% of people won’t ever twitter
Back to politics again, but I think anyone can see the wider implications for social media in this new Prospect poll about who uses twitter. I’ll let the excellent Dizzy Thinks blog spell it out for you.
The most validatory statistic from the poll toward my view that Twitter ‘ain’t all that’, is that 76% of the British population said they’d never used Twitter and, also, had no intention to use it in the future. In other words, Twitter is a communication medium that encourages groupthink whilst simultaneously making the group believe their views are having influence on a wider population when in fact they’re all just shouting at each other in a locked and sound-proof room.
If 3/4 of the population aren’t using it, and have no intention of using it, it’s a severely limited medium. Sure, it’s great at getting in touch with that 1/4 of the population. But only a fool would put it at the heart of their marketing strategy. When you rely on twitter to do your marketing for you, you’re broadcasting only to a limited number of people with limited appeal. As Dizzy puts it, ‘a locked and soundproof room’.
The prospect poll shows that most twitter users are left leaning liberals. What would a more detailed survey show? That they were more likely to be vegetarians, that they were against nuclear power? That they were more likely to be anti-capitalist hippies? Probably not. But Twitter only reaches a certain type of person. Personally, I think it’s great for tech launches and reaching people who work within the technology / online industries. But that’s as far as it goes.
Because nobody else uses it.
Dude, you’re probably a lone ranger in a sea of people promoting social media. You’re like Tom Hanks on “Castaway.” I’m shocked to hear someone make the statements that you and Dizzy Thinks make. Why? Because everyone I speak to drills in my head the importance of staying diligent and riding the wave of Twitter, facebook and the likes.
I’m new to the whole thing (my blog has been up for a week) and every blog site that i visit talks about social media! social media! What do you suggest for a novice to do, seriously. Can I really get traffic or subscribers another way? I’m asking because I’m somewhat of an introvert and i hate promoting my posts (Hey I just posted on my blog 6 reasons to febreeze your jock strap). Come on, really? If there’s a better way Please, bro, let me know.
Now on to the good stuff: DUDE your site is sick! When I saw it on Union Room I had to click. Did you do the design yourself? It’s so clean and pimp. I mean it’s just amazing. You’re my hero, no joke. It just has a whiff of fashion edge. Man! That’s all.
-reid klos-
Thanks for the comments. I’ll try to respond to all your points.
Twitter is great for certain things — like bringing quick floods of traffic to your site. But I’m sceptical about its ability to actually improve your conversion rate. Twitter seems to bring in a lot of window shoppers. So while I think it should form part of your overall marketing strategy, I don’t think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.
I linked to Dizzy’s blog because I’ve been posting a lot lately about how I think next year’s election in the UK is going to be a major testing ground for new ways of online marketing — including social media. That’s what Dizzy is talking about too.
The Prospect (a major political magazine in the UK) poll shows that
1. 3/4 of the population are totally excluded by Twitter
2. People who twitter belong to a very narrow sub-section of society, they’re left-leaning, young and urban. In short, in this country, we’d call them “Guardian readers” in old terminology.
Dizzy’s point, which I’m picking up on, is that using Twitter as your primary communication method is pretty much like “preaching to the converted” — you’re only reaching people who are already like you, who already agree with your views — again, it’s fine if that’s part of your marketing strategy, but it’s a case of knowing your target market. If you’re aiming your site, product or service at young, urban, left-leaning tech enthusiasts, fine. if you want your campaign to have a broader reach, think again. Something like 78% of people watch video online — hence my assertion that viral video is where companies can make a really big splash in their marketing campaigns for relatively little money. Twitter is one form of social media. It’s not the most important — by a long way.
With regards to the site, thanks! I helped out with the designs at the wireframe stage and had some creative input, but the site was designed and built by my friend Spencer at youlove.us — we work together sometimes and if you’re ever looking for a web designer in the UK, I couldn’t recommend anyone better!
I’d need to know more about what your goals are before I knew how to promote you. But there’s some really good stuff on copyblogger if you’re looking to increase traffic to your blog. I think it’s pretty essential reading, I won’t post specific pages, just read it every day and learn! =)
I’m not saying don’t twitter! That advice is primarily aimed at business startups, SMEs etc who have big marketing budgets who are spending it all in the wrong place. Twitter so long as it’s free and encourage people to re-tweet your posts! But don’t spend money on it!
Thanks again for the comments — we’re going to update the graphics on the site soon, so come back in the next couple of weeks and let me know what you think!
Let me just say that I can understand the results of the poll, even though I don’t believe that they reflect the reality of the situation.
We’d need to look at the sample that voted on The Prospect’s poll. Who are they? How old are they? What business are they in? What type of social people are they? etc.
Judging by the nature of the magazine, being a political print-magazine, you can tell who actually noticed the poll or cared enough to vote on it. And that would be the fraction of people who don’t tend to take advantage of social media. So 76% actually is from among the small percentage of people who aren’t taking interest in SM, and who, from the total percentage of the nation’s population, are a minority.
I wouldn’t say that I am a big advocate of Twitter, I’m only new to it myself, but I learnt how to make use of it. My advice to anyone looking into diving in SM is to know what your goals are, and who you are targeting, then make a little research from there to see where your target audience huddles and how to effectively get it to notice you.
Good points Manal! Totally agree.
As it’s Prospect I’d say the results would be as well weighted and fair as a more generalized voting intentions survey — ie very accurate and a broad cross-section of the whole community — which is why I think it confirms my suspicions, ie that twitter in the UK at least is limited to a very narrow cross section of left-leaning, urban tech enthusiasts. They’re the people you reach via twitter and if you want to reach them, great — but it’d be dangerous to make twitter your primary social media interaction mechanism. It’s one of many means.
Everybody’s on facebook, even my parents, who don’t even know what twitter is.
Personally, I’m totally hooked on Tumblr, which is a microblogging site with much more potential than twitter, because it allows more rich content to be posted. Twitter will only ever be a signpost you can follow or ignore.
And I’ve had a livejournal since — gasp — late 2000! so I reckon we can say blogging’s here to stay.
If I ever find a use for twitter, or if a broader section of society starts to use it, I’ll sign up. But for now I’m trying to spend my energies casting a wider net. I’ve got a website, a blog, a livejournal, a tumblr, a linkedin and a facebook — twitter doesn’t really seem to add anything to the mix for me.
You know I’m a big fan of yours, and on many issues we think alike, so it would be really good for me to interact with you a little here. The difference is, of course, that I’m an Average Joe. I don’t understand the techniques or the markets to ever make anything of my writing, so I content myself with subjects that have some meaning to me. If writing doesn’t have personal fulfilment while it takes up time and emotional energy for no reward, it doesn’t happen. For all those reasons: lack of initiative through ‘meaning’, I struggle with the concept of Twitter.
Perhaps it does have its uses. I didn’t really think of it as a commercial medium. Generally, Twitter reminds me of the mantra in the early 1640s. The Stationers Company responsible for print licensing control collapses and just about anyone can publish anything. This doesn’t go down well with those trying to forge a literary career, now seeing hundreds and hundreds of pamphlets appearing out of nowhere. The new ‘hacks’ get labelled as ‘locusts’, ‘word peckers’, ‘paper rats’ and so forth. I’d love the thought of royalist writers punning on word peckers tweeting. The concern is, obviously, that once quality descends into quantity, every new publication has to try harder to be read.
Twitter has concerned me that it would satisfy an insatiable need that many seem to have these days to publicise themselves (and their mundanity) silly. Point is, of course, it’s not the only medium for this, by a long stretch; it’s just the most ephemeral and superficial one. Given that these qualities are the last thing I’d like to instill from my own meagre efforts to contribute to the world’s stockpile of thought, it lightens me that Twitter might not be the force it hoped to be. I’ll keep my fingers crossed it remains that way.
From a tiny and humble corner of cyberspace,
KaM
Cheers dude!
Twitter is definitely cyberspace marmite. You either love it or hate it — either way it’s here to stay. If you love it, you’ll have lashings of it with every meal and if you hate it, you’ll never touch it.
I fall into the latter category, although because I work with a lot of tech clients, twitter’s natural dominion, I keep getting hounded to get on it. My blackberry already bleeps ceaselessly, having to keep track of half a billion tweets a day would probably make my head explode. Especially when nine out of ten of them are utterly mundane and self-absorbed. I’ve tried Twitter a couple of times. And it makes me facepalm after thirty seconds.
I’ve seen twitter work to very good effect creating “online flashmobs” — pushing a lot of traffic very quickly to one place. It’s sort of a crowd effect, and that’s part of what bugs me about it I think. Crowds can be synonymous with sheep, and never more so than on twitter — where everyone bleats in unison with their re-tweet of whatever today’s cause de celebre is, whether it’s hounding Daily Mail journalists or ganging up on AA Gill for shooting a baboon. There’s something of an ugly herd mentality about it and the more I think about it, the more I think it’s lowest-common-denominator crowd sourcing.
Having said that, it is massively effective as a promotional tool, because if you love it, if you’re part of that crowd, you go with the flow — be it a crowd, a herd, or a mob.
I don’t deny that twitter’s powerful and can be incredibly useful at targeting those 24%, but it’s really not “all that” — for the reasons I described above in my post. Twitter only reaches people who twitter. And the majority of us still don’t.
The chap who designed this site wants me to make my blog re-tweetable. It’d give my blog an occasional traffic boost, so it’s probably a good idea. If people want to re-tweet what I say, great. But do I, personally, have time to sift through hundreds of people’s tweets every day to find the interesting links I’d like to follow? Probably not.
Twitter’s like panning for gold. Great when you find a nugget, but you have to stand in a constant stream of other people’s shit to do it.