For brands aiming to reach younger millennials, “it’s probably not going to be top of mind, to be completely honest,” Shenan Reed, president of digital at MEC North America, said of Twitter during a conference session at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, last week. “If I am going to reach them with something relevant, I am probably looking at Instagram and Snapchat.”
Twitter in 2016 will be no small task.
After already establishing itself as a platform for marketers around the world, Twitter this year plans to spend more resources than ever marketing itself, signaling that the company understands it can no longer rely on its traditional promotional strategy of word of mouth. “For the first almost 10 years of Twitter’s life, we had virtually nobody in marketing, which we used to be proud of,” Twitter COO Adam Bain tells Adweek. “And now we realize, in retrospect, it probably held Twitter back from growth because the role of marketing in business is an incredibly powerful skill and an incredibly powerful muscle to flex.”
In 140 characters or less, Twitter is the playful bluebird/social media monster that changed how we talk to one another—and even sparked a literal revolution or two. At this milestone, the social network that made “tweeting” part of our global vocabulary and culture would seem to have plenty to celebrate, boasting 320 million monthly users, a billion-dollar ad business and celebrity devotees
