I came across an old article the other day: Find a “Tweet” Deal on Advertising
Word of mouth advertising has been one of the most traditional ways of advertising and it has been proven effective for all these years. For example, this summer, all I saw on my twitter homepage was tweets on how good “Inception” is. Normally, I don’t usually go to a movie theatre to watch my movies, but with all the excitement building around me, I was inclined to go see it in a theatre.
Humans have a very special characteristic called curiosity. This is the only reason why our civilization advanced. If you see a crowd circling around something, you would likely want to go check it out and see what’s going on. Because of this curiosity encoded in our DNA, we would like to know what everyone is talking about and find out for ourselves. Twitter happens to be one of the places where many conversations are going on.
According to the article, social media is expected to represent 20% of overall advertising by 2014. I believe that percentage is going to continue to rise and more companies are going to invest more in social media campaigns and handheld marketing because it allows the companies to connect with their customers directly. Our society is adapting quickly to this emerging trend of social media, and it won’t be long when Internet will be offered anywhere, anytime you want for free.
For example, TweetROI, or the pay-per-tweet program, seems to be a good investment. It allows users to tweet ads for businesses, helping businesses advertise with low costs and targeting the right audience.
However, as good as the whole tweeting advertising may sound, I personally still have doubts for the success of the program. It is likely that TweetROI would help increase exposure and traffic to the businesses; however, just like how some consumers prefer not to click on “sponsored ads” versus organic search results on Google, some people would find sponsored ads not as credible and too commercialized. Twitter is supposed to be genuine conversations and sharing. When businesses try too hard to tap into this market to market themselves — it may not work as effectively as they have imagined.