Matt Roche | Marketing

I have been watching a lot of the Ashes cricket recently and as I work online I have also been looking at various ashes-related websites throughout the day. On my online travels I discovered that a couple of the Ashes commentators are using the micro-blogging phenomenon – Twitter. I find this quite fascinating on many levels. The first thing which is incredible is that whoever manages these middle-aged ex-cricketers has managed to persuade them to use a silly website to market their commentary service. The other thing is that the commentators seem to embrace the service completely. They constantly update thir accounts and, quite often, their musings and mutterings are quite interesting and informative.

The people that are now starting to use Twitter often seem like quite unlikely candidates for such a service. They haven’t really been seen elsewhere online, but for some reason the requirement of only having to write a couple of sentences has huge appeal. Many would like to think that a service such as Twitter is for one type of person, who works in a certain industry or is part of a certain group. However, if everyone who uses it can get what they want out of it, I think it can only be a good thing that there is much diversity of user and reason for use.

Other high profile figures have now started to adopt Twitter too. Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama are both avid Twitterers, updating their accounts on a very regular basis.

Barack Obama is obviously a very well regarded personality as it is, and his wife, Michelle, is becoming quite an icon in her own right. This will probably help him even more, one would imagine. Gordon Brown, however, is not a very well regarded personality at this time and as such, the raised profile of Sarah could really help him. She can connect with all sorts of people; people who may follow politics and people who may not. Either way, if she can give off a positive impression of herself to a number of demographics, it may well help poor old Gordon.

I think that the fact we are now starting to see people who have previously been very unknown online – and to a great extent unknown in real life – is very good. It’s great from a marketing perspective and it’s good to be able to see a bit of personality from people who have previously only hidden behind, or been known for their link to another person.