An interesting morning spent at yesterday’s #GrowWithTwitter event. Despite the coolly-lit basement venue in the London Film Museum and the horticulturally-based hashtag, this was neither a club night nor a gardening event.
No, this was more an affirmation that twitter is where it’s at.
But they would say that I hear you cry. Well, you’d be right because there is always a self-serving air to sessions like this – it was their event after all. The difference being, it all seemed to ring true.
Unsurprisingly over-subscribed, with a lot more than 140 agency characters crammed into every available space to hear how far 140 characters could really take us and our clients.
Not just a numbers game
Aside from the surfeit of staggering stats, of which there were many (1 billion tweets sent every 2.5 days, up to 5% CTR on promoted tweets, 1.4 million uses of #ThankYouSirAlex within first hour of Fergie’s retirement) there was also a general sense of bigger picture about the whole thing. GrowWithTwitter was all about the fact that twitter has grown up.
No longer just a social network was the message. This is a marketing platform; something that is both difficult to argue with and also a challenge that perhaps others snapping at twitter’s heels have still to master. Over to you Pinterest and Tumblr.
Content DNA
With hashtags playing an increasingly important role in all forms of broadcast, the below twitter graphs show almost identical plots of twitter activity for screenings of the same film on two different channels, at two completely different times of the year. It’s fascinating that there is almost a twitter DNA for a piece of content, validating that audiences will respond in the same way regardless of situation.
Twitter is of course not everything and despite claims that twitter is the second screen, it is still just one vehicle among many that can be used to reach users. And even with all the great case studies of tweet frenzies and hashtag hedonism, it would have been good to see more on the actual ROI of campaigns.
But what was abundantly clear is that there are few companies that could so easily fill a room for half a day to sell its wares and that #GrowWithTwitter was actually feel good all round. Because everyone’s favourite micro-blogging site can do great things and really can help our clients grow, and keep on growing.
You also need the right agency to help plant the seeds and add water…
