Twitter marketing is a tricky business. There are those who can claim to have many thousands of followers and yet they are getting nothing out of what they do. There are even websites that will help you to buy thousands of followers. There is little chance all those followers will actually pay any attention to what you are tweeting. How do we know if we are getting attention, and how to do we know if someone’s Twitter numbers are real? The big record labels will not even consider an artist, and this is an indication of how important it can be for some professional to have large numbers. Here is a look at some of the issues related to social media, and how Twitter is not as social as it may appear.

• Group Users. There are many situations where group communications are important, and timely communication among a group can make business operations run so much smoothly. Twitter can be applied in this method in so many situations. For example, a construction worksite can benefit from this. Workers, supervisors, managers, and other contractors can stay in touch and keep all those concerned updated. Even more importantly, if someone steps offsite, they are not going to fall out of a localised group. Twitter is an excellent collaboration tool for groups and companies. The original purpose of Twitter seems to have been lost.

• Follow to Be Followed. There are some activities that have become common among those who are trying to build their Twitter numbers. Churning is the term used to describe the activity of following someone, and then once they have followed back, they are unfollowed. It seems there are more users of Twitter that are using it for marketing purposes than compared with just using it to communicate with friends. In this sense we can see it as less social than other types of social media.

• Content Consumption. According to Yahoo’s research 50% of all content that is actually be consumed by users of Twitter is actually only produced by 20,000 Twitter users. Those who are famous and influential are having a great effect, and outside of that, the information share is actually very limited. The 80/20 information share is certainly not happening considering this research, and the credibility of Yahoo.

• Fragmentation. Those in fashion are interested in those who are in fashion. Those who are bloggers are following those who are bloggers. All of this is not very surprising considering Twitter was created as a group-sharing tool. No one expected it to explode into the global marketing tool we see today.

Twitter as a tool of online marketing calls for some sophisticated strategies and a true step-by-step approach to developing a true group of those who are really interested in what is going on in your life or business sphere. All elements of your SEO, social media marketing, and web design must be integrated and have true value for online users. If this is not the case, you Tweets will only get lost in the Twatter.