DennisDemori.com

I was just watching the recent TED Talk by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. In the video he talks about how the explosive growth of Twitter has mainly come from unexpected uses by the Twitter community.

This reminds me of the Pabst Blue Ribbon story. PBR has always been a low-key, blue-collar brand. Back in the 1970′s, it was really popular, but with the explosive growth of huge brands like Budweiser and the birth of the microbrew industry, it lost a lot of its appeal.

As Douglas Atkin pointed out in “The Culting of Brands,” by the middle of 2002 the company was experiencing a completely unplanned turnaround:

“Pabst Blue Ribbon had miraculously become the fastest growing brand of all domestic beers, achieving double digit growth within a declining industry.

What happened to spark such a turnaround? A thriving community had adopted PBR as a brand that espoused their ideals. They liked how they had never seen advertisements for it, and that it was a throwback to America’s heartland and blue-collar ideals. It was a beer that wasn’t about image.

Ironically, this embrace quickly gave PBR an image. Impressively, PBR’s marketing team has resisted the temptation to jump on the hipster bandwagon and try to market to this cynical demographic. They realize that they are popular because they haven’t been trying to woo anyone. PBR wisely realizes that it needs to completely let go if they want to continue to enjoy their resurrection within the hispter community.”

Brands exist for the benefit of people. There’s really no other way to look at it. I think that today brands need to be malleable – people need to have the ability to mold them as they see fit. By doing so, people feel a sense of ownership for a brand, and therefore become more loyal.

Just look at Wikipedia. Most people didn’t think it would work, and what most of us underestimated is that users would be so committed to building the brand. All Wikipedia had to do was provide the skeleton – its users would do the job of fleshing it out.

Anyway, here’s Evan Williams at TED. It’s a short video – only about 8 minutes.

via jmilles

I’m just going to dive right in and assume you know what Twitter is. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, view the links at the bottom of this post.

My first Tweet was back on Sept. 10th, 2008. It took a few months to really start getting a hang of it. If you’re not following (and being followed) by at least a couple dozen people I think it’s hard to wrap your head around it.

Originally I used Twhirl for a couple weeks but then I switched to TweetDeck and I couldn’t be happier. I also use TwitterBerry occasionally on my Blackberry. The interface on TweetDeck is terrific and it makes it MUCH easier to segment people and track certain conversations. Right now I’ve set up two special groups – in one group I only follow Planners (to network and keep abreast of what’s going on in the Planning community) and in the other I follow non-Planners.

The majority of people I follow are Account Planners, work at Ad agencies, or are involved in Branding, Marketing and/or Social Media. I also follow a few companies like Evernote and Drop.io to stay aware of product updates.

So here’s the main ways I’m using Twitter right now:

• First and foremost, I try to focus on creating value for others. I think karma will somehow work its way back to me.
• As a second RSS Feed: There’s a lots of conversations and links being passed around Twitter. This is a great way for me to stay current on news, industry trends, etc. I think of Twitter as a chat room on steroids. When I find something of value, I often share it by retweeting, emailing or posting on other sites and/or bookmarking it on Delicious for future reference.
• To share items I find interesting: articles, pics, news, stories, etc.
• To take polls/surveys: This is something I started doing recently and I think it’s a great way to do a quick “focus group.”
• I use search.twitter.com when I want to find out about specific topics. I’m in school right now, and Twitter has been useful when I want to get some consumer opinions on clients I’m working on, like Red Mango or Mtn Dew.
• Building my network: I occassionally use Twitter to direct people to my other online locations, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and my blog.
• Originally I was a spectator on the sidelines, but over the past few months I’ve started to join the conversation.

What I don’t do:

• I don’t follow everyone just because they follow me. I’m sorry. There’s just NO way I could possibly follow thousands of people. I don’t have the time or the interest. Twitter’s just another social networking tool – it’s not my life. There’s certain topics/industries that I’m just not interested in either. In fairness to time – mine and yours – I can’t follow everyone. I prefer to keep my focus on who I follow because I want to build stronger relationships within those circles.
• I rarely talk about day-to-day activities. You won’t know what time I woke up or that I’m bored/tired/sleepy/hungry. Again, I think the best way to use Twitter is by constantly adding value.

Even though we can get caught up in the technology aspect, I think at the core of Twitter or any other social site is information sharing and relationship building. The people who take advantage of these two principles will be able to get the most out of the site.

You can follow me here on Twitter.

For further info, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s excellent blog post: Web Strategy, What The Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter

Twitter on Wikipedia

Beginner’s Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter by Zappos.com  CEO Tony Hsieh

Chris Brogan: Newbies Guide to Twitter

Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

UPDATE – FEB. 15th, 2009

Excellent new post from Brian Solis: Finding The Tweet Spot, Top Tips For Building Twitter Relationships