Tweeting To A Million

It made news a couple of months ago when Ashton Kutcher hit the million follower mark on Twitter.  Since then, he’s been joined by Ellen, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon, and as of this writing 19 others at the million mark.   By the way, I only have 999,600+ to go – feel free to follow.

Why is this a big deal? Well, scale is part of it. If a cable network had the ability to reach over a million people at any point during the day (I’m equating this to the total program day numbers), they’d be a top 10 network. How about if they had the ability to ping over 2 million folks at once? There is only one cable network – Nickelodeon – that can do that throughout the day and only 4 in primetime. Well, there are also four users on Twitter who can do the same.  Imagine what happens when those folks get their user bases to 5 million or more.  Imagine further when you have the ability to get really good user data from all your followers – not just who they are, but demography.  You can already, with some effort, figure out what topics are of interest to your base which point you toward more precise messaging or, in non-marketing terms, a better and more enjoyable conversation.

There is a lot of controversy about sponsored tweets and I’m not sure that any of the folks with these user counts are going to use their accounts primarily for revenue-generating reasons. Notice that I didn’t say “commercial reasons”.   That’s because most of the top tweeters are either celebrities or commercial ventures, and the former fits into the latter since at some point these folks become a brand.

But that’s the scale question.  There’s also the fact that marketing needs to change as the places where the customers are changes.  I’m rarely having a conversation with a client or potential client where the subject of Twitter doesn’t come up.  Many folks still downplay these newer channels until they start looking at numbers.  Then it becomes a “when” and “how” conversation, not a “why” or “if”.