Mele’s Musings

Tapping the Twitter Zeitgeist

For all of the things that Twitter is or is not, one thing that it does better than almost any other (current) service is tap into the Zeitgeist.

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Regular users of Twitter are well aware of this.  Whether it’s the zeitgeist of the people you follow or of the nation, the attractiveness and addictiveness of Twitter is based in its real-time pulse measurement.  Want to really know what’s on people’s minds?  Just check out the top-10 topics that people are responding to on Twitter.

One of the challenges of tapping into the mood of the moment is that it is unfiltered, which means its use for analysis is limited unless we spend time breaking down the data.  Otherwise, we can fall victim to the common fallacy of selective perception: listening to or attaching more relevance to the things we want to see or believe rather than what is really going on.  Twitter let’s us do that on steroids.

We have to be exceedingly careful that we do not focus on a few comments on Twitter (or other talk-back forums on the web) and assume that they are the perception of the masses.  But, the information on Twitter is still very valuable, and when used correctly, can teach us a lot about our brands, our ad campaigns, our products, etc.

So, what are we to do?  One thing I have been seeing lately is an unbelievable number of companies who track and report on sentiment.  And that’s a good thing.  There are several I have seen who have very interesting tools and who can offer a lot of insight into what people think or feel about brands, campaigns, etc.  I strongly recommend that companies use these tools as one of the ways they keep track of the health of their brands or the success of their marketing.

(On an aside, in order to use this type of analysis well, companies have to be very disciplined, and very clear about what it is they want to measure, otherwise these services begin to track data that no one cares about.)

Recently, a new free online service called Tweetfeel has come out, that provides marketers with a quick, easy way to tap into the zeitgeist.  Rather than just tracking comments, Tweetfeel also gives a sense of the sentiment (positive or negative) associated.  See the screen shot below for an example.

It may not be the perfect tool - it certainly lacks important aspects like being able to breakdown commenters by demographics or getting into more depth around what people are specifically commenting on - but it is a great way to get a quick pulse on what is going on.

More than a specific endorsement for Tweetfeel, the point is that tools like these will only continue to grow, and marketers will need to be able to use them.  We can no longer consciously decide to avoid the truth - it’s already out there, and we have a responsibility to our companies and our customers to pay attention.

While we don’t want to be overly obsessed with the now or the immediate - we have to be disciplined and not overreact or get overwhelmed by the overdose of media that we can now tap into - we do have many more tools at our disposal to understand what people are thinking than surveys and focus groups.  We need to learn now to apply these tools in the right way so that they are effective means for us to get smarter and to better serve our customers.

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