It Should Have Happened: Professional Branding Comes to Twitter
by
on August 27, 2008,
I am sure that every Twitter user has already seen this or that example of marketing or promotion on Twitter. We have also seen ideas that popular users can monetize their accounts with huge numbers of followers by using some brand’s logo for their avatars and skinning for their entire pages. Today we finally see what should have been expected: marketing professionals offering their services to officially promote brands on Twitter (well, actually they seem to offer consulting services to teach companies how to use Twitter efficiently but still I’m sure they will execute some of the measures themselves once their first customer arrives).
I’ve stumbled upon a thread on FriendFeed introducing the newly launched service named Cherp - the agency offering branding and marketing services on Twitter and using a very familiar bird in its logo. The agency has been founded by Matthew Tharp, the guy behind theAnalogFormat, a design studio working on brand identity, web and graphic design. The information I’ve found about Matt on LinkedIn hints that this brand identity studio is something of a hobby to Matt while his main job is as a sales executive for BoldChat.
I believe that Matt must be a huge fan of Twitter himself as he has come up with an idea for an entire business based around Twitter. It is obvious that there are companies that have already started to realize the full potential of social media but unfortunately promoting a brand on Twitter (or any other social media service) takes at least some experience and knowledge (not to mention time). So if a company is offered some proper guidance on how exactly the company staff should behave on Twitter to target current and potential customers with a friendly yet powerful message, I believe such guidance will be very much welcomed by the corporate marketers.
In addition to offering branding on Twitter Cherp also advertises a service named “Twitter Platform Integration” which seems to be in helping a client to add a Twitter widget of this or that type to their websites or some other online properties.
I am very curious about two things here. First, it will be very interesting to get to know how such service are priced. Another thing is how exactly the agency will be targeting its prospective customers. I am sure it will hardly be on Twitter since ideally the companies seeking advice on how to use the micro-blogging community should not be on Twitter at all. But if they go with direct sales approach, I am sure it will involve lots of interesting conversation with prospective customers like “Twitter? Twitter what?”.
We all know that there are already numerous online marketing consultancies offering their clients advice on how to promote a service or a brand best via social media sites. The only thing that these consulters have not done yet is launching a special agency for Twitter only. But probably this niche marketing might be efficient enough for future Cherp clients to be satisfied.
What I will be looking forward to seeing on the site of Cherp is some feedback and testimonials from their customers - at least it will show which brands grow on Twitter naturally and which get a helping hand from Cherp. In the meanwhile I will keep wondering for how long Twitter will be providing a platform others monetize without making any money for the service itself.
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Another Croatian
John Jones
Svetlana Gladkova
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
Do you think it will work?
I suppose they should add branding through FF, bookmarking, etc.
Not that many people on twitter yet
People need to stop thinking of Twitter as a “micro-blogging” service, and start looking at it like a platform, or operating system. I have blogged a ton about Twitter lately on my blog. Everyday, I think of (and learn of) new ways to use Twitter (I just posted about some NEW ways that businesses can use Twitter)
http://www.afpr.com
http://www.twitter.com/A_F
@Sasha: Not quite sure about if it will work, my guess is more to no than to yes actually. But there are already tons of consultants offering their services for social media marketing and optimization (including many bloggers covering these very services) so probably such a very niche approach is needed as well. After all, at least they have a reason to market themselves - they claim they know everything about Twitter.
@Andrew: I don’t really like the term micro-blogging myself as I believe Twitter is more of a messaging tool based on how we chose to use it (blogged about it in one of the earlier posts). Marketing platform? Yes. Promotion platform? Sure. But operating system? Excuse me but no, way too much for Twitter. By the way, do you provide a similar type of services as Cherp?
@Svetlana, I am a business/marketing strategist in Web 2.0. I do not personally offer a service like Cherp (I do not do the technical integration). I consult on what the type of tool a “Cherp” should integrate. I use the term “OS”, but if you want to just refer to it as a platform, that’s fine as well.
The point, when I use the term OS, is that developers can write applications that work on/with the Twitter API. An example I posted on my blog recently talks about an application called http://www.phweep.com Phweep allows anyone/s to hold VOIP calls using the Twitter API. So after reading the aforementioned platform if you do not get the “OS” comment I would be surprised.
A visit to Cherp leads me to believe that they are not doing real integration work (using the API), but rather showing businesses how to use existing tools to integrate with blog platforms.
Businesses will start writing full blown applications as soon as they realize they can (soon). So just as one quick example (heck I already gave you the Phweet example), I use an online service called flighttracker.com to track airplane flight information. You will soon be able to send a Tweet to @flighttracker “American #3434 and it will automatically pole it’s system and tweet back the current flight info… The sky is the limit here, one only needs to have an open mind.
@Andrew: Thank you for explaining your background and why you refer to Twitter as an operating system, now I do understand what you are talking about and can agree with such an interpretation now that you have offered examples here.
As for the “sky is the limit” here, can’t agree unfortunately. We have already seen services relying on Twitter to a certain extent (RememberTheMilk sending users their upcoming tasks via sms) and as soon as Twitter decided not to send those text messages outside of the US, Canada or India the crucial part of these services was damaged. Unfortunately Twitter continues to show us that it can rarely be relied on 100% so any enterprise actually building a real application to integrate Twitter into their business line must take that into account as well.
This concept of Cherp is very interesting and it never ceases to amaze me the excellent creativity and talent from the main populace. We as humans are capable of creating and thinking such great projects, concepts and thoughts that I wish we could harness that same talent so as to end all wars and forge a better more productive and healthy society.