Is microblogging suitable for business marketing?

If you're a business marketer and worried that you're missing the boat on microblogging, don't be too much concerned. The uses for microblogging in business are rather limited. But microblogging has some potential to become a productive part of the future business marketing mix.


Microblogging services allow users to post short messages (up to 140 characters) on a message board. Regular posting allows you to acquire a list of followers, and you can reciprocate by following others.

In business marketing, microblogs are sparsely - though increasingly - used. Sparsely, since the limit of 140 characters is simply too short to pass complex messages. Yet increasingly, as some companies have started to experiment with the medium (e.g. ABBworldwide, Siemens_energy or coppertalk on twitter).

There are abundant stories on the internet explaining you how to use microblogging to 'develop your online brand' or to 'drive traffic to your website'. But attention is already a very scarce commodity on the web. A service that specifically caters to low attention spans is not going to deliver you a captive audience.

There are also some articles advocating microblogging for internal communication, to share knowledge or information. But organisations already have so many formal and informal channels internally that it's hard to see what microblogging might add.

Still, a few uses for microblogging in business can be envisaged:

If your target audience is already using microblogging, and you cannot easily reach them otherwise, then setting up a microblog channel is a must. Also, if you're a major brand that is being actively discussed on a service like twitter, you need to be there to monitor and participate. Twitter promotes its service for business on these premises, and they make sense. But note the big ifs in the premise: internet access for business is often restricted and it is far more restricted for social media. And microblogging caters to a younger audience.

You could consider setting up a channel with daily tips and tricks: energy saving, use of a software package, … But consider, how quickly will you run out of steam?

Sharing information. If you're a large or active organisation with a lot to share, a microblog channel can be useful. Many newspapers and non-governmental organisations have already found their way to microblogging.

To end with a positive note, microblogging has some clear advantages that could make it useful for business use. The requirement to compress your message in 140 characters requires clear and concise communication. Such lean communications are efficient for both sender and receiver. And last but not least, through selectively following interesting people on a microblog platform, you can set up a monitoring service on your industry.  Effectively, you'll have a network of free-of-charge correspondents.

Selected microblogging services

• twitter, the most popular microblogging platform. Twitter is actually one of the simpler platforms, but it is surrounded by a wealth of tools to use it more effectively. E.g. Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to manage your microblogging project.
• lifestreaming through LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook
• Posterous, a great service for posting pictures. Moreover, it allows submission by e-mail.
• Tumblr, to integrate the various streams of your web presence into a single blog.
• Google Buzz, Google's attempt to participate to the microblogging game.
• identi.ca, allowing file attachments
• plurk, interesting concept of the timeline, and more structured conversations.

Further reading

Twitter demographics, from Harvard Business Review's Blog