Marketers Look Forward To Twitter #Music Data Trove
By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.
Twitter is a data goldmine, one reason its awesomely-designed new music app has a fighting chance even though it doesn’t see the whole internet. Part of that is how efficient its hashtags and other elements slice through what everyone is doing so neatly.
The same rich data that makes Twitter so powerful for us (allowing you and I to see every #NowPlaying tweet in a single click, for instance) also makes it a great tool with which marketers can gauge not only the general zeitgeist, but our personal zeitgeists as we tweet the music we’re listening to, the donuts we’re eating, or whatever else we like to share there. Who am I to judge? I have a whole account for retweeting myself.
Following last week’s public launch of Twitter #Music, marketers are wondering what this means for them, which is fine, because they have a job to do just like everybody else, and a lot of that job involves social networks these days. The verdict, according to Marketing Week UK, is that Twitter’s music app is good for marketers and advertisers for two reasons:
- It helps us feel like we’re sharing what we’re doing on Twitter in such a data-readable way for own own good, rather than just to be served up for advertisers. This impression, wrong or right, is good for advertisers, because with it, we’re more likely to divulge things about ourselves, musical or otherwise. And when we talk about music there, we power Twitter’s (Emerging and Popular) music charts.
- Marketers can use those charts to decide which bands are cool, hot, or whatever yo want to call them. Then, they can get close to those artists by tweeting about them (thereby reaching some of their fans), paying them to say stuff, or hiring them for advertisements in order to bolster their appearance of “with it”-ness.
From the article,
As well as #Music being visually compelling [more on that] for consumers, it puts across the impression that Twitter is leveraging usage data for users’ benefit rather than on behalf of advertisers. Ultimately this loop will reach advertisers because by providing a fun utility by compiling user data, those tweeters are likely to share more of their interests on the site as a result, meaning more granular keyword targeting possibilities for brands.
While there are no plans to launch ad products on the #Music platform for now – and it’s worth considering there could never be pure-play ads on the site because to listen to full tracks users must have paid subscriptions to Spotify or Rdio – there are still some ways marketers can tweak their Twitter strategies to make the most of the app.
When artists who feature in ads get to the top of the singles charts, clever brands should tap into the zeitgeist and reference that fact through their social media marketing.
Now brands should also keep an eye on the Twitter Music charts to tap into the tracks that are hot right now – particularly those climbing up the charts in the #NowPlaying section, which reflects the music being listened to by the consumers they follow. The app could even act as a useful insight tool for brands to source the artists that could become suitable ambassadors – or simply an idea as to the relevant tracks to tweet about to their audiences.
The engine that makes all of this possible is our collective willingness to share what we’re listening to with our followers and every other interested party, with these public tweets.
Fine. There’s a certain symmetry there. After all, we have plenty of free access to music data — maybe a good way to pay for that is with our own personal data, at least with innocent stuff like “I really like this song right now.”
