October 7th, 2009
I Tweet Therefore I Am
Enough about you. Let’s talk about ME.
That’s certainly the take-away for many people dipping their toes into the raging Twitter current.
According to a recent study out of Penn State:
The researchers examined half a million tweets during the study. The team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned — to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else — and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.
There is a trend when it comes to micro-communication and what it is used for, according to study author Jim Jansen.
“Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship,” he said. “Personal use is all over the board.”
That is putting it mildly. The urge to self-purge is so great in micro-blogging (Yawn, another day…Just grabbed some coffee….Gotta get home and let the dog out….) that The Wall Street Journal asked yesterday, “What Kind of Twitterer Are You?”
Are you a an Informer or a Meformer? Citing a new Rutgers University study, the Journal says:
“…..four out of five Twitter users are the [meformers], posting updates mainly about themselves. The remaining 20% are “informers,” tweeting information, such as links to news articles.
They coined the term “meformers” to describe users whose tweets could frequently be categorized as “me now” — what they were doing or how they were feeling. These updates do serve a purpose, they said. “Although the Meformers’ self focus might be characterized by some as self-indulgent, these messages may play an important role in helping users maintain relationships with strong and weak ties.”
I’m trying not to choke with delight on my Cheerios.
As evangelists of our own brands, we should strive to be informers — giving and sharing information, responding to others with more information, commenting on relevant postings and the tsunami of information coming at us every day. While it may humanize me in my followers minds to learn what kind of dog I have and whether I believe Starbucks can really make an instant coffee that tastes like fresh-brewed, at the end of the day it none of that really matters.
It’s like the small talk before the meeting begins.
Necessary, hard to do well, but not the real business at hand.
