Marion, Montgomery, Inc.

Every so often the PR team gets together to discuss books, articles, industry trends. This week the discussion topic was a recent blog post by Brian Solis, summarizing The State of the Tweetosphere. Here, Solis offers a rosier outlook than the Mashable article mentioned earlier when we discussed Twitter’s flatlining traffic.

Some interesting tidbits:

• The number of people signing up for Twitter is still growing, but not as fast as before.
• User engagement with Twitter continues to increase, with more users filling out their full profile information, posting tweets more frequently, and following more users each day.
• 120 is the new 140. Leaving room for extra characters increases the likelihood your tweet will be retweeted and shared amongst users.
• You are most likely to be retweeted on a Monday or Friday.
• The most active times on Twitter are Thursdays and Fridays, between 10 and 11 pm.

What do you think of the current state of the Tweetosphere? What does this data mean for you?

Working with the founders of Kirtsy and Opmom to prepare for the Mom 2.0 Summit, we’ve had the privilege of helping plan things as they come together and in the process witness the sparks of ideas and magic that go on behind the scenes. For example the birth of the Mom 2.0: Defining a Movement exhibit, which started as a discussion reflecting on all that women online have accomplished, and now seems like such a natural extension of what we will discuss and celebrate come February 18.

Since the announcement of the art exhibit, we’ve found it strangely difficult to put into words what the exhibit (not to mention the movement) is really all about. Try a dozen times, but today friend of Mom 2.0 and author Katherine Center released a video that really captures it:

The Mom 2.0 movement matters because it launches women to new places.  To places where women are decision-makers, business-owners, fire-bringers — CEO, CFO and MOM. Marketers have known for a long time that moms guide the decisions of their families, but with the coming of Web 2.0 their influence reaches farther, to not only influence what society thinks, decides and wants to buy, but to the other side where they themselves are creating the ideas and products society consumes.

What are they saying is next? How can you as a brand or business influence the ones that influence us all? Join the conversation. It’s going to be a good one.

In the last year or so, savvy marketers have changed their approach to advocating for their brand online.

Many started with the attitude of “Here’s a new shiny tool, how can we use it?”

Now fully immersed in the social media craze, we find ourselves more appropriately asking, “What can we do for our clients outside of the medium, out in real life that gives us something worth sharing online?” We focus in on the news and finding the right audience for it, letting the decision to opt for Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Flickr follow our findings.

comic by Tony Gigov

Maybe it’s this shift that has led to Twitter’s flat-lining traffic in the last few months – too much of a good thing and suddenly everyone is sick from all the sugar.

Can users self-regulate our own over-share and turn the Twitter volume down to a medium before we all go deaf? Or will the silence be the beginning of the end?

Questioning the future of one medium reminds us that the audience never goes away, it only changes location. Is Twitter a fad? Maybe. But researching to connect with our target audience and preparing to meet them there, wherever that may be, allows us to provide sustained, impactful social media outreach for our clients.