When the first tweet was sent in July 2006 few would have predicted the huge phenomenon it would become, with it now boasting over 200 million users who tweet over 65 million tweets every day! It has transformed the way the media present the news, the way celebrities handle their PR and the way businesses approach online marketing. But you would have been forgiven if, five years ago, you did not have a plan for handling this new media age. But as soon as Twitter began to mirror the success of its social neighbours Facebook and LinkedIn a whole host of would-be groundbreakers and innovators have come (and in many cases ‘gone’) to join the part. No longer is being unprepared an excuse – you need to expect the unexpected.
The online world was awash with excitement in early 2011 about the social Q&A site ‘Quora’, with predictions that this would be the natural next step for social media. Indeed one critic went as far as to predict that ‘Quora will be bigger than Twitter’. Yet 6 months later Quora’s traffic has diminished and the public have moved their search elsewhere. What should we learn from this? Not only are the public willing to accept a new Social Media platform but they are actively looking to embrace it.
You can’t predict what will be next but what you can do is have an agile and flexible online marketing program that allows you to quickly adapt your social behaviour. Twitter has made media engagement ‘real-time’, so you need to be ready to act and evolve quickly and efficiently.
