There’s a great article in the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday that details some of the interesting ways that media companies are trying to adopt the social networking service Twitter for use as a marketing tool. Among some of the ideas that are posited in the article including having show creators and cast send messages from premier parties and the like to interested viewers.
The usage base of Twitter is still pretty small (it drew only about 370,000 unique visitors to its website in June, according to the article), but the potential for interesting campaigns with it that go way beyond the idea of just sending standard marketing messages over the service is really high. Certainly, shows like NBC’s “Heroes,†which has involved its users in elaborate alternate reality games that span text messaging, websites and even voicemail systems could easily integrate Twitter as a means to keep viewers engaged with the ongoing game.
NBC has, actually, already announced that they’re going to do something similar to this with the show “Chuck,†whose title character, a computer geek who becomes a superhero, will begin twittering about ongoing events in the show. These twitters will be used to push viewers to a variety of other sites that keep them engaged.
Now, it is true that the small usage base, made up primarily of early adopters, is a hindrance to using Twitter exclusively for a campaign, but combined with other media types, I can see some really cool stuff coming out of this. Anyone have any suggestions for how they’d like to see it used?
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