The First Rule of Twitter: Don't

What if I were to tell you that I've invented a new communications technology? Well, not really "new," per se -- more of a modified version of an existing medium. My brainchild doesn't make money, at all, though it is AWFULLY popular with a specific demographic: annoying and self-obsessed people with too much time on their hands. Oh, and most of the time it doesn't work (sorry).

You've heard my pitch. Now, are you excited enough to divert scarce development resources to deploy my technology across your business? Are you stupid enough to prioritize marketing applications based on it over those more traditional forms of outreach that are currently making money for your business?

Of course not.

And yet there is a technology fitting this exact description that B2B marketers across the United States are falling over themselves to deploy. I'm talking, of course, about Twitter Inc.

What is it about Twitter that has caught the marketing industry's attention? The main reason given for Twitterizing an integrated marketing campaign is that it will increase revenue by driving more people to the advertiser's site -- generating more uniques and page views. But Twitter does nothing of the sort, or certainly not at a level that is measurable. And I know this for a fact, because Internet Evolution, one of the Websites I've founded, recently performed quantitative experiments to evaluate Twitter's effectiveness in driving audience and traffic.

Let's say your immediate goal is to register more people for your company's Website. We know that the average registration promo email blast has a success rate of 0.08 percent (or, for every 1,000 emails you send, eight people will sign up). And we also know that writing the email to purpose (rather than reusing old copy), ensuring that your subject line doesn't trigger spam filters, and combining exclusive content with a giveaway can increase that to 0.125 percent. It's all very boring and, if you happen to be a B2B marketer, all very useful.

Now compare this data set to Twitter's ability to increase registration on your site by pretty much nothing at all.

Good Web marketers know that it takes at least half a dozen years before the true value of any new Internet technology becomes apparent. Bad marketers chase after the latest shiny Internet gimcrackery, bolting it onto their existing campaign in the hope of driving some fast ROI (these are the ones who were implementing RSS feeds and podcasts a few years back).

So is Twitter completely useless? No, for two reasons.

First, let's assume you shut down your Twitter development team while your competitors continue to waste cycles on it. Presto! You have the reverse equivalent of a competitive advantage.

Second, Twitter is a great case study or model for what not to do. In April the founders of Twitter finally announced that their strategy for making money would be advertising. This is ironic, not to mention embarrassing, given that Twitter had spent a considerable amount of time hinting that it would not adopt an ad-supported model.

Here's my theory: If we assume that the founders of Twitter really are as stupid and shallow as they appear to be, the best thing to do is the opposite of what Twitter is doing. Yes? In this case that would mean moving businesses away from advertising.

Instead, I believe B2B marketers should embrace a future where their primary function is to identify sales leads and turn them

into revenue. And that's a future in which Twitter is noticeably absent.

— Stephen Saunders is Managing Director of DeusM, publishers of The CMO Site.

The CMO Site is an executive social network that provides CMOs and other marketing executives from the world’s leading organizations with a real-time, online venue where they can convene to discuss how they're delivering on the most critical marketing priorities of the day. For additional marketing news and research visit www.thecmosite.com.