The Spyder Trap Online Marketing Blog

Good Twitter. Bad Twitter? – Pros and Cons of Twitter.

Posted June 19th, 2008 by Mike Rynchek

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Guest Blogger: Erica Butler of GrowthFire

 

Let’s open this series by simply laying out some of the major benefits and issues around Twitter.

 

Good Twitter?

Twitter has an incredibly devoted group of people in the online space. Why? Is it because people simply love finding new ways to connect to one another? Perhaps. It also could be because Twitter is just so simple to use. Create an account and instantly connect with others. How great of an idea is that? As an online marketing and social media fanatic, this provides one more medium that allows me to communicate with groups of people in new and creative means and even acts as a means to solve client objectives. You need an additional medium to connect with client/customers/users? Why not a free service like Twitter? You need a simple way to provide technical support for your product or service but have limited time and funding to develop the technology internally? Why not using Twitters existing technology and user base? The point is this… Twitter can be used for a number of applications other than just posting messages stating, “I’m eating a sandwich” or “the dog is barking”. You just need to be creative.

 

Bad Twitter?

We have all likely seen the really neat “Twitter is currently down for temporary maintenance” page. Actually I am looking at it as I am writing this post. How fitting? What with the cute little birds carrying the whale… how calming? In reality, this is a major issue. Unfortunately Twitter did not plan to average 2,000 plus new accounts, 1 million + users, 200,000 active users per week and 3 million messages a day all by March of 2008. (Stats by Techcrunch.com) Too often Twitter is either slow, has limited functionality or even worse has crashed completely? This planning error has absolutely killed the user experience and has turned many Twitter brand evangelists into brand demons.

 

John Freund CEO of Nabbit.com put it best when he stated… “We put a great deal of time and effort into building fans of the Nabbit brand and technology and we want to ensure their user experience is as optimal as possible every time they use Nabbit.”

 

Graphs provided by http://www.kottke.org/07/05/twitter-vs-blogger-redux

These graphs cover the following time periods: 8/23/1999 - 3/7/2002 for Blogger and 3/21/2006 - 5/7/2007 for Twitter.

 

 

Why don’t we conclude by laying out some of those pros and cons and you can decide for yourself? Good Twitter. Bad Twitter? Did I miss any?

 

Pro. Ability to reach a mass group of people.

Con. Market becomes a very crowded space, very quickly.

 

Pro. Ability to send out a message and drive traffic.

Con. Clearly a few bugs and technical issues.

 

Pro. New way to engage with people. Kinda?

Con. Often times, people don’t respond due to clutter.

 

Pro. Another Social Media tool.

Con. Another Social Media tool that you need to constantly update.

 

Pro. Can be creative with the technology. (Ex. Use it for customer service.)

Con. Only so much you can do with the technology. (Not a ton you can do with Twitter.)

 

Good Twitter. Bad Twitter - You be the judge!

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Tags: Nabbit, Social Media, Tech Crunch, Twitter

The Twitterfied series… all about Twitter

Posted June 18th, 2008 by Mike Rynchek

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

There has been a great deal of discussion around Twitter, so I thought what the heck let’s make Spyder Trap’s first official blog series dedicated to just Twitter

 

During this series, we will discuss such highly debated topics as:
   1) Good Twitter. Bad Twitter? - Pros and Cons of Twitter.
   2) Cash Twitter cow - Business applications of Twitter.
   3) Twitter Yes! Twitter No! – Final thoughts and opinions on Twitter. PLUS – Tony Hsieh interview

 

Love it or hate it we plan to get to the bottom of this Twitter mania to find out the true issues and business applications surrounding this craze. We will wrap up the Twitterfied series with an interview with Zappos CEO and avid Twitter user Tony Hsieh. Tony is very well known for his business application of Twitter as a means to connect with Zappos customers. Finally, Erica Butler of Growth Fire Group will add insight and perspective into the industry impacts of Twitter.

Tags: Social Media, Twitter, Zappos

Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal Panel Discussion

Posted June 13th, 2008 by Mike Rynchek

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

Closing out the week with the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal, Spyder Trap Online Marketing was pleased to participate in an expert panel discussion.  The goal of the panel is to provide advice to growing businesses facing challenges in the area of growth management, marketing, managing cots etc and is the Business Journals version of a makeover show.  Spyder Trap Online Marketing represented the online marketing portion of the discussion providing insight and feedback in the areas of product placement, marketing strategy and online marketing tactics.  Other areas of representation in the discussion included members of the legal, Public Relations, Marketing and industry experts in the product field.

 

We’ve been doing it for a couple of years and it works quite well — we always have good interaction between the subject and experts (and sometime between conflicting experts who each have their own ideas on how to approach a problem) and often the subject learns something altogether new about themselves or their business. An owner who comes in looking for advice on technology may find out her real issue involved delegation and training, for example.  Mark Reilly - Managing Editor, Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal

 

Special thanks to the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal for allowing Spyder Trap Online Marketing to participate in the discussion.  Look for us in the July edition of the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.     Â

Tags: Marketing Strategy, Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal, Online Marketing