How Twitter Can Drive Your Bottom Lineby Stephen DiMarco, Yesterday, 3:15 PM "Yes, I have tweeted." If you're a fan of Stephen Colbert, you'll know that hisboastful response to Meredith Viera earlier this month wasn't phrased exactly thatway, but it's clear that America is tweeting along with him.So, how many people are using Twitter? According to Compete data, 14 millionpeople visited twitter.com in March, a 76% increase from February and a whopping14 times more than March last year. And this doesn't count the twitterati who relyon software apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic. The site already attracts more peoplethan Ticketmaster, WSJ and LinkedIn, and the term "Twitter" had more queries than"American idol" and "IRS" across the top search engines last month. Like itssocial media predecessors, Twitter has captured the attention of consumers -- andmarketers have to play catch-up once again.Given this explosive growth, is there any doubt that brands will try to tapTwitter as a marketing tool? But therein lays the challenge: marketers haven'tencountered anything like Twitter before. Despite its large user base, theunderlying mechanics of Twitter are really about being atomically small. As amarketer, how can you hope to drive sales or create a branded experience whenyou're faced with a 140-character limit and a massively fragmented audience? Howdo you attract a following? How does it influence your other marketing programs?And how do you know if your efforts are creating ROI?If you've read my other submissions to Metrics Insider on Moneyball Marketing,you'll know that I am a big fan of marketing that starts with a specific outcome,and then employs creative tactics and new metrics to measure progress and iteratealong the way. And in this sense, Twitter is a great tool. While many people arecontent with Twitter's soft ROI impact (like seeding and/or listening toconversations about your brand), we are starting to see examples of Twitter's hardROI impact, too. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue are tweeting promotional offers tofollowers, and Dell is probably the first company to achieve $1 million in salesexclusively through Twitter. And you can be sure these brands are taking what theylearn from these campaigns and informing the rest of their marketing.My personal favorite example comes from American Express, specifically its OPENForum. The OPEN Web site combines professional editorial, consumer-generatedcontent and product marketing. To tap Twitter, American Express co-opted thepopularity of its guest bloggers like Seth Godin, John Battelle and, inparticular, Guy Kawasaki, (who wrote about Twitter on the OPEN Forum site justlast week ).Analyzing the traffic patterns of the OPEN Forum Web site reveals some great data.Every time Kawasaki posts a blog to the site, traffic doubles. Looking at dailytraffic patterns since the beginning of the year, nearly every peak in visitationto the site corresponds to a post from Kawasaki. This is significant for a sitethat is already averaging over two hundred thousand visits each month.So how is American Express promoting this great content - banner ads? SEM? SEO?None of the above. Instead, the brand relies on Kawasaki's existing Twittercelebrity, knowing that his tweets reach over 100,000 followers, who will thenretweet the post to their followers. All of this activity drives traffic to theOPEN Forum Web site, where American Express can convert them into the right cardproduct. One of the most telling statistics, however, is that Twitter is now the
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