I’m a marketing guy, so I’m supposed to love every new gadget that helps me reach customers, right?  Well, I’ve tried dating Twitter for a while now, and all I can say is that I’m just not that into it.  I get the idea behind it, even if I think the concept preys on the laziness in all of us.  I’ve seen way too many people I respect use SMS shortcuts and godawful English simply because they want to tweet but are constrained by the 140 character limit.  If you have to use abbreviations like h8, b4, gr8 and l8r to fit your statement into the Twitter confines, maybe you should be blogging your feelings instead.

Yes, I do get the purported purpose of Twitter.  It’s microblogging.  You say what’s on your mind and you’ve got 140 characters to do it.  Now it might just be me, but I have a lot of trouble communicating anything in 140 characters or less.  Plus, it seems that 90% of the people actually “tweeting” (can I tell you how much I hate that new inductee in the dotcom lexicon), are nothing more than spammers and bots.  I keep an eye on Twitter for company reputation management purposes, but almost every single tweet is nothing more than an affiliate announcing a coupon (most of which are bogus by the way.  As a general practice, PoolDawg rarely puts out coupons other than our bounceback mystery gift coupon and the coupon that Sarah Rousey gives out).

This brings me to my next dilemma – if I really do hate Twitter (which I do), why do I feel the need to tweet?  After all, the company does have a Twitter account and I do post to it every now and again.  Because I see no real use for it though, our tweets have devolved to being nothing more than sales announcements.  Sometimes we use it to run WPBA scores for Sarah’s matches when she’s playing, but mostly it’s nothing more than sales announcements.

I’ve tried asking people what they want us to use Twitter for.  I’ve tried asking other people in the ecommerce world what they use Twitter for.  No one seems to have a good answer.  Everyone seems to be doing it “because they have to” and to be honest, I can’t blame ‘em.  In fact, the only good thing I’ve seen from Twitter since it’s inception is the guy who does the “shit my dad says” tweets.  And even those aren’t very funny anymore.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why I’m in a foul mood, it’s probably because of this:

Yes, that is my tooth.  Well, actually it’s part of a crown that cracked over the weekend.  It’s been a while since I’ve been punched in the jaw, but from what I recall, it felt about the same as how I feel now.  Sadly, while I didn’t tweet it, I did the Facebook equivalent after I got home.  Apparently if I’m in pain, it’s my Facebook/Twitter duty to make sure everyone knows it.  Thankfully though, my awesome/loving/sympathetic/wonderful wife decided to run to the store to get supplies for another batch of matzah ball soup since I can’t chew.

It seems that in the past nine months or so, Twitter has gone mainstream.  Honestly, we’ve been really dragging our feet jumping into the Twittersphere, mostly because I’m having trouble justifying the time expenditure on it.  PoolDawg has a Twitter account and I try to “tweet” (how much do I hate that phrase) for PoolDawg at least once per day, but when will I see a return on my time investment?

Rather than judge this tool as of having little value simply because I don’t get it, I decided to look at one of the companies that has really embraced the tool – Zappos.  Zappos has dedicated an entire area of their site to Twitter and their CEO account currently boasts over 390,000 followers.  With that many followers, there must be something interesting being said, right?  Apparently not, as the posts coming from this account talk about red eye flights, coffee with mom and spicy pork rinds.  OK, maybe Twitter is a tool to put a personality and a “face” on the company.  I get that.  After all, I spend a couple hours per week trying to blog in the voice of a freaking ceramic bulldog.

I guess that’s the point though.  While Twitter isn’t going to show a clear ROI, what it just might do is improve your customer loyalty.  When customers feel like they “know” a company, they’re more likely to buy from you.  It builds relationships and trust.  Thanks to Twitter, Zappos is not a faceless corporation.  Their customers can see that their employees (everyone is allowed and encouraged to use Twitter) are real people with real interests that their customers can identify with.  If Twitter can help a large company build a rapport with their customers, it just might be worth doing.

Yiddish Word of the Moment:

Goniff
Definition:  A scoundrel, a rogue, you get the idea.
Example:  That goniff Huck Finn tricked me into painting his damn fence again!