Groundswell in the Twittersphere

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When you find yourself scrolling through your Twitter feed, what types of things make you stop to read them? If your feed is anything like mine, you most likely follow too many people and organizations to be able to touch on every single post. Even less, if like me, you only look at it every few days…or weeks…or months. Honestly, I’ve never been too keen on Twitter but understand certain aspects of its usefulness. Here is a live look at what my feed looks like right now:

Yeah…boring. However, not so boring in the eyes of Li & Bernoff. They state in the book that Twitter was able to catch on quickly because it is simple. They state that “signing up is trivial. Posting an update is a piece of cake” (pg 197). They also go on to state that it interfaces with cellphones and allows for on-the-go updating (pg 197). That is great and all, but can you tell me of any other social media applications that could also fit that description? If you guessed “most of them”, congratulations – you are correct.
There were so many topics that could be touched upon out of chapters 9-12, but I keep coming back to this curious interest in Twitter specifically. Why not Facebook? Does Facebook not harness the same types of principles? Is it not as effective, if not more so? Why would these 140 character snippets draw attention from the authors? The authors list the elements that they believe make Twitter an important and influential tool. They are: Followers, Hashtags and Searches, Mentions and Retweets, Links, Lists, & Apps and Tools (pg 197-199). Can you name one particular tool from this list that is not available on nearly any other popular social media platform today? Yeah, me either.

So I finally grabbed the book to look at the dates and see that the Second edition was published in 2011 and the first was published 2008. Alright, makes sense…at these times, Twitter was the only platform that implemented many of these communication methods. But today, you can see that both Facebook and Instagram also implement these methods as well. If things like hashtags were so unique, but are now commonplace – where exactly does this leave your 140 character statement?
Well, if you are Davey Alba – writer for Wired.com – 2017 is going to be the year that Twitter shapes up or ships out. Alba writes that “tweaks [made to the Twitter application] have had virtually no effect on Twitter’s bigger problem: making itself a mainstream social network able to appeal to a wider public, much less one that’s grown to have the same kind of stature and influence as Facebook” (Alba). So even today, people recognize that Twitter is a niche – but it is a niche with influence.  Li & Bernoff point out that only about 7% of the population actively use Twitter but of that 7%, most users at three times as likely to be a creator. (pg199-200).  Has that changed since 2011? Would a platform such as Instagram, that allows almost anybody to become a creator (in a sense) not fare better than Twitter in this area? I’m not sure, but assuming that it hasn’t changed we can begin to understand how Twitters sphere of influence quickly outpaces platforms such as Facebook.
I still think that it would have been useful to take a few extra chapters to break down other platforms as thoroughly as they did for Twitter, but it really did leave me with a better understanding of how stacked the technographics are in favor of the creators in this instance. Personally, I think this has really made me re-evaluate its usefulness. I’ve always taken a passive interest in the sense that, I can understand that Twitter is important on some level, but still unsure if it is important to ME.
I think that the authors do a good job of really explaining why Twitter is special and how we can all apply the fundamentals of the groundswell to this application. I’ll be really interested in how their perspective has (or has not) changed in an inevitable third edition of this text someday in the future.

Putting it all Together

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What do you think of when you consider different methods of energizing the groundswell? While you are trying to construct massive online PR campaigns in your head, maybe we could start a little bit smaller than that. According to the text, word of mouth marketing relies on its ability to be believable, be self-reinforcing, and self-spreading (p130). So as an example, what do you do when you have a great cup of coffee? You might tell someone, right? You might invite a friend out to this new coffee shop, and next time they invite one of their friends to the same place. This goes on and on for a while until one day when you are desperate for a decent cup of coffee and find yourself short on time. You round the corner to your favorite shop and the line is out the door and you have to go someplace else. As the saying goes, word of mouth travels fast.

So, how do you do this exactly?

Today, people can take their word-of-mouth marketing online. You probably won’t have to wait to take your friend to the new coffee shop for them to find out about it. You can probably broadcast it out on Facebook or Twitter and accomplish the same thing, but reach hundreds of people instead. If you take a peek at the Instagram post below, you can see the the user’s photo was ‘liked’ over 80 times. That is a lot of attention for just one cup of coffee.

Since we are talking about coffee, I’m going to tell you all about how much I love Brew on the Gridlocated on Franklin Street in Worcester. I despise Dunkin Donuts, and am always looking for a great cup of coffee with a bit of atmosphere. I don’t find myself downtown very often, but after having heard people buzzing online about this new coffee shop, I knew I had to try it.

Something like a new coffeeshop is a great thing to try to energize. Brand enthusiasts within the community have a simple motivation to spread the word – they NEED you to stay open so that they can continue to enjoy your product. Is it self-serving? Entirely, but that is okay. People inherently do things with themselves in mind because they want to be noticed. This form of online marketing allows the original poster to draw in the groundswell for any number of personal reasons, but ultimately it serves as an important tool for the business – it fosters an atmosphere in which businesses can hear what people are saying about them.

Today, it is assumed that if you have a service to provide, you will set up the necessary social media sites for your enthusiasts to congregate on. But what about the sites that you don’t sign up for voluntarily? Sites like Yelp prove to be helpful because it allows both the stakeholders and the business owners to communicate their views and learn from the experiences of others. However, which Yelp, you relinquish all control over what people out in the world are posting about your product. But why are they there? They’ve probably been energized and energizing your customer base gives you, the business owner, more opportunities to listen to the groundswell, to talk to the groundswell, and then energize these people again from the valuable information you have already gathered. This is a cyclical process that, if executed properly should yield results over time. Ultimately, if all of the cogs (businesses, products, & consumers) in this machine work fluidly, nearly everyone involved wins.

What I appreciate the most about this type of word-of-mouth marketing, is that it has held up against the test of time all the way from Oral traditions to Web 2.0. And while websites and reviews online may come and go, people will always desire the ways in which they can connect to each other in any way possible and when the internet isn’t there for you, a cup of coffee will be.

Subscribers For Sale

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How many times have you seen a photo on Instagram or a clip on Youtube that has gone viral? Now, how many of those pics or clips were so unimpressive that you have thought to yourself – “well, even I could do that!” I’m not going to doubt you because well, maybe you could – but would you be one of a handful of people whose social media accounts have skyrocketed them to internet fame?

Lucas Cruikshank knows a thing or two about the rise of Youtube stardom. Remember Fred Figglehorn? The obnoxiously-voiced character was created and performed by Cruikshank. The videos that he posted were made in his home, and featured him speaking directly to the camera – no heavy editing, elementary delivery, and over all poor quality. A few years later, he went on to star in his own Nickelodeon produced shows and movies. Fred literally went from this:

                                                                                         
to this

 

The rise of the internet celebrity isn’t a new one, but it has become much more profitable.

Forbes Magazine recently published this article, listing the highest paid online celebrities. For example, PewDiePie, a Swedish video game enthusiast, is currently seated at the #1 spot with $15 million in pretax income. Why you ask? What marvolous and innovative creative ventures does he share with the world that makes him worth 15 million dollars?

He uploads snippets of himself playing video games for 50 million subscribers.

Yeah…that is it.

Toothpaste for Dinner

Okay, I’m not ACTUALLY naive enough to think that it is that easy. In fact, Most YouTube stars have varied revenue streams – but they have all stemmed from their online popularity.  They monetize their videos through “pre-roll advertisements and by integrating sponsors into their content” according to Forbes. They also may tour, sell merchandise and make cameos on traditional forms of media like television. A few have their own products, like the aforementioned PewDiePie who has his own mobile platform video game (complete with in-app purchases). Here are some other examples of regular people who became famous by creating Youtube followings, as compiled by Forbes:

 

It is obvious that with growing technology, the advertising platforms that are available through traditional media are no longer the only option. By tapping into popular social media users, some with MILLIONS of regular subscribers, a company or organization can contract with the user to push their brand sometimes, through apparent advertising or just through product placement.

What is true no matter what, and perhaps the most valuable lesson, is that YOU the creator do not have as much control over your brand as the people WATCHING your videos do. Without the subscribers and without the groundswell, your videos are…well…just lame clips of your cat chasing a laser pointer.

 

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