MUMBAI: While Twitter struggles to find the right formula to make a profit, some of the microblogging site's users are making a nice living off it. These are professional tweeters, people on whom many brands rely to make their presence felt in social media.
Mini celebrities of the micro-blogging world, professional tweeters have a sizeable fan following, giving them the imprimatur of credibility that brands find useful for imagebuilding on Twitter.
One such professional tweeter is Hrish Thota, 31, a former employee at consulting firm Capgemini. He has more than 32,000 tweets on his scorecard and a following of 4,000, making him a prize catch for brands such as the Nano (owned by Tata Motors), Figo (Ford), Kurkure (PepsiCo) and Royal Challenge (United Spirits).
Because of the network of connections inherent in social media such as Twitter, a following of 4,000 is a big deal. This is because each follower is linked to others, who in turn have their own links that the professional tweeter can potentially reach. Twitter has more than 200 million users worldwide. In India, there are nearly 4 million on the micro-blogging site, according to Vizisense, an online audience measurement platform.
Thota has been blogging for a decade and in recent years he has also been organising 'tweetups', events where Twitter users meet in person. "Brands were willing to pay me for doing the same for them and so I switched," says Thota, who just returned from Sri Lanka after an assignment tweeting and blogging for a client.
He spends an hour each day on every brand that has contracted him. If there is an event or a product launch, he lets his followers know about it. He is also expected to create conversations about the brands. This often means he posts questions about a brand, or makes some remarks, expecting people to respond to it. This helps marketers obtain feedback and hold interest where the shelf life of content is limited.
Pay depends on the kind of work. Part-time work for a brand usually fetches Rs 30,000 a month. Travelling to events, blogging and promoting it at tweetups cost extra. Thota says he makes about Rs 1 lakh every month.
Even before professional tweeting catches on big time, practitioners are building niches of their own. While the likes of Thota and Swaraj do brand promotion on social media, there are others like Vijay Raj, a 28-year-old IT analyst who moonlights as a live tweeter and blogger at events.
He prefers to tweet for events rather than brands as the incentive for him is that he gets to network and build contacts. "Twitter is nothing but a stream of posts. Hence, a lot of offline work is involved and personal connections ensure more engagement," says Raj, who prefers the part-time arrangement for its flexibility.
Chennai-based Sandeep Varma quit advertising to pursue his interest in social media full-time, and part of the reason he did it was because he could build contacts, work on interesting projects and have the freedom to write about whatever he likes. He gets about Rs 20,000 for an event where the work involves doing a curtain-raiser, live tweeting and blogging and also getting feedback about the event after it's done.
While the livelihood of professional tweeters depends on their fan following, it also hinges on their credibility. These people have earned a reputation for being funny, intelligent or informative, which is why so many follow them. If they are seen plugging blatantly for products, their goodwill and followers will be gone. The trick for them is to find a balance between tweeting about the brand and continuing to tweet about the stuff they are known to tweet about.
"If you are too aggressive about a brand, people will 'unfollow' you. We have to maintain the decorum of the medium as well. You should know when to tweet from your personal handle and when to tweet from the official account of the brand," says Shyam Swaraj, a Bangalore-based brand consultant who tweets for Tata Docomo, Huawei, Kingfisher beer and not-for-profit group Janagraha. "When a brand speaks, it's a verdict and not a conversation," he says.
Jessie Paul, founder of Paul Writer, a marketing advisory firm, is of the view that professional bloggers engaged by brands can be perceived as damaged goods, defeating the very purpose of such an engagement. "We look for people we know from Twitter. If people know that one does it for a living, then they take it with a pinch of salt," she says.
Companies such as United Breweries, which owns the Kingfisher beer brand, are however happy with the sort of user-generated content these professionals create for them. "We work with these guys because they believe in what they write and they write what interests them.
We pick and choose them. They help us get product ideas, research ideas and experiences. They help in finetuning our brand strategy," says Samar Singh Shekhawat, senior vice-president of marketing.
Mini celebrities of the micro-blogging world, professional tweeters have a sizeable fan following, giving them the imprimatur of credibility that brands find useful for imagebuilding on Twitter.
One such professional tweeter is Hrish Thota, 31, a former employee at consulting firm Capgemini. He has more than 32,000 tweets on his scorecard and a following of 4,000, making him a prize catch for brands such as the Nano (owned by Tata Motors), Figo (Ford), Kurkure (PepsiCo) and Royal Challenge (United Spirits).
Because of the network of connections inherent in social media such as Twitter, a following of 4,000 is a big deal. This is because each follower is linked to others, who in turn have their own links that the professional tweeter can potentially reach. Twitter has more than 200 million users worldwide. In India, there are nearly 4 million on the micro-blogging site, according to Vizisense, an online audience measurement platform.
Thota has been blogging for a decade and in recent years he has also been organising 'tweetups', events where Twitter users meet in person. "Brands were willing to pay me for doing the same for them and so I switched," says Thota, who just returned from Sri Lanka after an assignment tweeting and blogging for a client.
He spends an hour each day on every brand that has contracted him. If there is an event or a product launch, he lets his followers know about it. He is also expected to create conversations about the brands. This often means he posts questions about a brand, or makes some remarks, expecting people to respond to it. This helps marketers obtain feedback and hold interest where the shelf life of content is limited.
Pay depends on the kind of work. Part-time work for a brand usually fetches Rs 30,000 a month. Travelling to events, blogging and promoting it at tweetups cost extra. Thota says he makes about Rs 1 lakh every month.
Even before professional tweeting catches on big time, practitioners are building niches of their own. While the likes of Thota and Swaraj do brand promotion on social media, there are others like Vijay Raj, a 28-year-old IT analyst who moonlights as a live tweeter and blogger at events.
He prefers to tweet for events rather than brands as the incentive for him is that he gets to network and build contacts. "Twitter is nothing but a stream of posts. Hence, a lot of offline work is involved and personal connections ensure more engagement," says Raj, who prefers the part-time arrangement for its flexibility.
Chennai-based Sandeep Varma quit advertising to pursue his interest in social media full-time, and part of the reason he did it was because he could build contacts, work on interesting projects and have the freedom to write about whatever he likes. He gets about Rs 20,000 for an event where the work involves doing a curtain-raiser, live tweeting and blogging and also getting feedback about the event after it's done.
While the livelihood of professional tweeters depends on their fan following, it also hinges on their credibility. These people have earned a reputation for being funny, intelligent or informative, which is why so many follow them. If they are seen plugging blatantly for products, their goodwill and followers will be gone. The trick for them is to find a balance between tweeting about the brand and continuing to tweet about the stuff they are known to tweet about.
"If you are too aggressive about a brand, people will 'unfollow' you. We have to maintain the decorum of the medium as well. You should know when to tweet from your personal handle and when to tweet from the official account of the brand," says Shyam Swaraj, a Bangalore-based brand consultant who tweets for Tata Docomo, Huawei, Kingfisher beer and not-for-profit group Janagraha. "When a brand speaks, it's a verdict and not a conversation," he says.
Jessie Paul, founder of Paul Writer, a marketing advisory firm, is of the view that professional bloggers engaged by brands can be perceived as damaged goods, defeating the very purpose of such an engagement. "We look for people we know from Twitter. If people know that one does it for a living, then they take it with a pinch of salt," she says.
Companies such as United Breweries, which owns the Kingfisher beer brand, are however happy with the sort of user-generated content these professionals create for them. "We work with these guys because they believe in what they write and they write what interests them.
We pick and choose them. They help us get product ideas, research ideas and experiences. They help in finetuning our brand strategy," says Samar Singh Shekhawat, senior vice-president of marketing.
No comments:
Post a Comment