The Twitter Boom By Mark Blenkinsop

Cashing In On

Mark Blenkinsop, Head of Search at creative digital agency, Pod1 talks about social media and why companies should get involved.

Social media is everywhere at the moment, you can’t pick up a paper or browse a news site online without finding a mention of it somewhere, and probably 90% of this is focused on Twitter.

With all the noise around it, brand owners are starting to sit up and take notice, and ask how social media can be used as a commercial tool.

While many retail and e-commerce brands have been slow to jump on the bandwagon, there are some that are starting to reap the rewards of joining the Twitterati – the growing number of people using the media.

How and why should companies get involved?

Although there are still huge questions over how you monetise Twitter, whether you love it or loathe it, very few brands can go wrong by using it.

If you look at some of the purely online retailers such as Asos (www.asos.com) and Net-a- porter (www.net-a-porter.com), market leaders in online luxury fashion retail market, they have taken on board everything social media has to offer. How they use Twitter, in particular, is an example to other brands of its power as a customer-marketing tool.

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