Wikipedia describes Twitter as "a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets". So far so good, I knew that. However, I have never seen how it could be interesting for me to have a personal Twitter account and I don't know how it is being used as a marketing tool. So now I have signed up for a Twitter account (and believe me, I am not the only marketing professional without a Twitter account). When I registered I was proposed a list with different interest groups, for example "art and design" and "charity", which are sectors that attract my interest. So I clicked. Here, I am being proposed a list of popular tweeters under each field. Under charity I find Bill Gates… I will follow him since I am interested in philanthropy. Click. I suddenly see a Swedish name, Kerstin Erickson. Like that, just a name and no organisation. Since I am Swedish I am of course interested in knowing who this person is. It shows that Kjerstin Erickson is not Swedish but American (of course with that Twitter ranking…) and the founder of Forge. Forge is an international non-profit organisation that "facilitates human-driven peacebuilding and reconstruction in war-torn African communities".
After having googled Kjerstin I now know that she is one of the people that you definitely should know (according to CNN). She is a young, intelligent and successful social entrepreneur (a word that she hates…) and described as a social media phenomenon. She is everywhere on the Internet. I find of course my way to the Forge website to check out some more about her and her organisation. And there she got me. So after approximately five minutes on Twitter I am on Forge's website. I doing some more digging about Kjerstin Erickson, and everywhere I come across her, I find that almost exactly the same words are being used: The description about Forge, and about herself, has been reproduced with very few variations or developments.
It is a strong core message that is being delivered by Kjerstin and her organisation. She is quite obviously using herself as a major part the message, probably not just monitored by herself but also by the reproductive force of internet. She is interesting, she is beautiful and her professional aims are admirable. We do want to know more about her. It must be more powerful to use Twitter as a marketing tool with a personal signature behind a strong message, rather than an organisation. It makes it more personal, more thrilling. How about following the tweeds of Bill Gates and Paolo Coelho? This celebrity marketing works fine in the Forge case, because when it comes to saving lives and making a better world it does not really matter for what reason people get attached to a certain cause, does it? The problem with this kind of celebrity marketing is however if the celebrity suddenly doesn't live up to the expectation that the mediated picture demands. A theater director that I know always says that "a theater has to be bigger than its director". He is running most successful theater in Sweden. I suppose that that the question that will hang over me today will be if an organisation really has to be bigger that its Twitter person?
After this first day on Twitter I have a lot of unknown faces in my head and I am not very interested in what they have to say in 140 characters. But then suddenly one person stands out, like Kjerstin. She and Forege are today's winners. They have gained most of my attention. I am not sure that I would go from there to action, but in the future if I saw Kjerstin-projects I would certainly rely on their credibility. Just like that. After a couple of hours on Twitter.
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