Marketing managers I am sorry to say you are no longer in control

2009 has seen the rapid growth of Twitter, which on its own has led a revolution in marketing, customer service, news reporting and search.

Twitter is about to break through 7 billion posts! Just watching this live counter demonstrates the immense scope of information on Twitter: Gigatweet – live Twitter counter It shows little sign of slowing down with thousands of new members joining every day. The question that we are trying to answer at FWD Digital is how can businesses maximize their effectiveness on it.

There are plenty of examples of how not to use Twitter for business, but we have struggled to find many business to business brands that have successfully built the site into their marketing mix. That is an opportunity then! One brand that does stand out though is IBM. Their Twitter account for events works brilliantly and allows them to focus the message which that Twitter account is pushing.

Our view is that 2010 will see improved filtering of Twitter to enable users to split their accounts into neat categories. The Twitter lists have made a start but we feel that there are still improvements to be made. With brands such as Dell claiming to have made sales of up to $6 billion through Twitter in 2009 it is clear that more brands will start using it, however it is only through strategic use that businesses will achieve success.

There are many brands that started a campaign on Twitter but quickly tried to remove themselves after realising the power of consumers on the site. A real-time comment can be picked up and retweeted by hundreds of people within hours to undo a decades worth of brand building and trust. This is terrifying to many marketeers and CEOs, and especially in the financial services sector, they would rather keep their head in the sand.

But Twitter comments around President Obama, Michael Jackson and the Iran elections achieved national news coverage and it is only going to grow. Therefore the start of 2010 is the time to learn all you can about Twitter and social media to put you in prime position to implement an online strategy before the competition beats you to it.