There is a most interesting division of opinion in the corporate communications field today as to whether Twitter is a viable business and communications tool. More than half (54%) of the professional communicators surveyed by Poll Stream think Twitter Marketing is a fad. Yet, the success companies are experiencing who do deploy a Twitter Marketing Strategy is hard to ignore.

• Jet Blue Airlines – share travel tips http://twitter.com/JETBLUE

• Dell Computers – update customers on deals and provide offers over several created Twitter profiles   http://twitter.com/delloutlet

• Home Depot promotes its employees ‘off-work’  http://twitter.com/homedepotcanada

• HR Block – has Q&A sessions with customers   http://twitter.com/hrbtaxtalk

These companies and others have had measurable success with their ability to integrate Twitter Marketing into their Social Media and Marketing Strategy resulting in increased employee engagement, improved customer service and reputation, and boosting website traffic.

Twitter is not a fad or on its way out. Twitter has over 20 million users in North America and 50 million worldwide, 18 million unique monthly visits, and 19 billion searches a month!  Creating a company-wide engagement strategy that demonstrates a consistent and comprehensive brand presence, builds dialogue, new relationships with customers, and generates loyalty among existing customers, is an essential job for today’s CMO.

To assist companies in taking advantage of some of what Twitter has to offer Twitter has created the “Promoted Tweet” ad platform. It works a lot like Google Ad Sense. A search on Twitter results in one ad showing up. The ad is a “Tweet” that can be “Re-Tweeted”, made as a favorite, or replied to. Some early pioneers to try the Twitter Ad Model include: Starbucks and Virgin. The cost right now is priced on a CPM basis but I would expect the real value in advertising on Twitter (in the formal sense) will be when Twitter integrates a performance-based offer on “Re-Tweets”, replied to, linked to, and hash tagging. The campaign that most engages the Twitter community should cost the most (with an “up to” value determined in advance, of course).

Social networks have struggled with introducing revenue models. We have seen this with Face book. It is because we are all so touchy about being ‘sold to’ so disrupting ‘our space’ where we socially interact is easy for a marketer to do. For Twitter users natural real-time search is the draw. To search and receive ‘paid search clutter’, especially if texted to our mobile phone, will be a turn off. Privacy settings and search (type) options will be important. For example on a Saturday morning I might want to search geographically for offers in my area (paid search) but during the week I may want to search in real-time (sans ads).

The jury is out whether the newly released sponsored Twitter Ad Model will provide an advertiser gains beyond from just interacting with customers. There are already a lot of third-party analytic tools for companies employing Twitter Marketing. However, one thing is for certain there are no signs of Twitter decline. Marketers that dismiss Twitter as chatter do so at their own peril. As a free stream of consumer data that can be mined in real-time there are few resources that are more effective at capturing consumer sentiment and unearthing real-time trends than Twitter.