Customer Marcoms: A whole different kettle of Tweets?

Discovering that Twitter – Britain’s favourite digital channel du jour – has a retention rate of only 40 per cent really doesn’t come as much surprise. Maybe I’m getting a little old in the tooth, but Nielsen Online’s confirmation that even the short term appeal of reading such scintillating Tweets as ‘back from gym, swore at cat, now making cuppa’ points to the limited appeal of 140-character messaging. Even for ADD types.

The marketing moral of this story? Gathering more and more followers on Twitter is one thing, but keeping them engaged and interested is a very different (and difficult) kettle of Tweets for brand managers. My company’s on Twitter and this week I’m setting up my own account as the new Chair of the DMA’s Data Council, so I’m not just barking from the sidelines here. You can be sure I’m giving my ‘sticky content’ fingers a very thorough licking. (Sorry – didn’t mean to gross you out.)

In this post-content age, do the Twitter stats point to the medium no longer being the message, perhaps? Sure, Twitter’s now adding applications like Tweetdeck and TwitterGadget in a bid, I assume, to enhance the service’s retention rates. But at the risk of sounding like a cyber-canary tweeting in the digital coal mine, maybe we’d all do well to heed this warning: Online’s no ‘magic bullet’ for recession-bred client communication strategies.

Must fly. Stephen Fry’s just Tweeted that he’s going to the loo. Can’t miss that now, can I?