With this week's rollout of @anywhere, Twitter gives marketers a new way to use the micro-blogging site to promote brands and spread news about products and services. A platform for such third party websites as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo, @anywhere lets Twitter users send and receive messages while they are on that site as well as follow a string of related tweets.
"It's going to make it easier to keep the conversation going rather than having to manage so many different identities to engage around a piece of content," Rob Ungar, an account executive at Widmeyer Communications, says. "Right now, people can make comments on one site, of course, but they have to repost on Twitter. This will make it easier for people to share content and promote a dialogue, which is something that Twitter is very good at." (via TechNewsWorld).
Highlighting a Problem
The introduction of @anywhere highlights a related problem for marketers that use Twitter: it can be surprisingly difficult to capture how successful campaigns are, or not, on Twitter. Introducing third party traffic will only make the task more difficult.
Why So Hard
There are a number of reasons for this, according to Anil Batra, who writes a web analytics blog. One, most obviously, Twitter.com is not the only way to access Twitter. "A lot of people use 3rd party tools like Tweetdeck to access Twitter. A click on a link from such a tool won’t show up in the 'Referring Sites/Domains' reports in the web analytics tool, it will be listed as 'Direct Traffic' or 'No referrer'."
Also, he adds, the URL shorteners usually count clicks and not the actual visits/visitors. "Which means that they, not only capture human clicks but also the clicks from spider/bots, thus inflating the actual numbers of visits/visitors."
Where to Begin
Not that marketers should just assume a message will be heard and begin Tweeting without a plan. There are some guidelines that can deliver a reasonable picture of an ROI.
Start with a business plan specifically for the Twitter campaign, says Indu Priya, a traffic expert, who guest posted at Quick Online Tips. You need one to determine what is important to your organization and how to justify the expense.
"For example, Dell uses Twitter as a communication tool to inform their audiences about Twitter exclusive offers and discounts. For Dell, it is the number of users purchasing the discounted products via Twitter channel that they track and count. It is important to find how many Twitter users are actually clicking the link leading to sales page, how many are actually entering the coupon code and purchasing."
This marketing plan should also consider whether Twitter is in fact the ideal medium for your particular message - especially if geo-location services are part of the mix, or will be.
For example, it was clear to some at the South by Southwest conference that Foursquare and Gowalla have taken a big bite out of Twitter's dominance, according to CNET. "This year, I wound up not using Twitter for rendezvous or trying to coordinate meeting up with people," said Andrew Lih, the author of "The Wikipedia Revolution. "Last year, [Twitter] was sort of a universal SMS, and everyone kind of was hacking Twitter to a location-based service. But this year, Foursquare wound up being more useful for me for rendezvous and finding out where to hook up [with friends] because even typing in [on a Twitter app on an iPhone] 'I am at Ballroom A'" is annoying."
Assuming you have concluded that Twitter is the ideal platform - and why - there are a number of tools available that can best capture and analyze traffic flow.
Stay tuned for part 2: Retweets, Mentions and Followers.
