Today is the one year anniversary of SageCircle’s Analyst Twitter Directory. The first listing had 26 analysts from 13 firms, both boutiques and large firms. Many wondered how long before this fad faded away.
Far from being a dying fad, Twitter is transitioning to a regular communications tool for analysts and AR. Today the directory stands at 453 entries with 34 analysts added on Monday’s update alone. All the analysts who were on the original list are still twittering today, even if they are now former analysts. Analysts who were caught in the recent rounds of layoffs are using Twitter as a marketing and research tool as they hang out their own shingle. Analysts at the largest walled garden firms (Forrester, Gartner and IDC) have embraced Twitter with 202 entries in the directory, increasing the value of their personal brands. However, single practitioners and boutiques are leveling the playing field by being some of the most aggressive users of Twitter to increase their visibility.
The AR Twitter Directory is growing as well, from 52 entries when it launched on July 23, 2009 to 301 entries today. While AR professionals have been more tentative than analysts when it comes to using Twitter, savvy AR pros are making excellent strategic and tactical use of this tool.
Why aren’t you on Twitter yet?
If there is a conversation going on, can you afford not to be part of it?
SageCircle Technique:
- Because of Twitter’s zero startup cost, reasonable learning curve, and nearly zero switching costs, AR teams should jump in and start a pilot project to experiment as described in Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR toolbox.
- Because every analyst is a unique individual, the most important task is to Ask your analysts about their current and potential uses of social media to build an understanding of how they might like Twitter to be used to interact with them
Bottom Line: Social media continues to grow and evolve in all areas. How it might be used in the context of the analyst ecosystem is no exception. The best way to learn is to just start playing with the various forms to see how they might fit into your daily routine.
Question: Do you Twitter? If no, why not? If yes, how does it fit into your job?
Do you need to create an AR strategic and tactical plan that incorporates social media? Are you thinking about experimenting with social media? SageCircle can Help – Social media represents new opportunities and challenges to AR teams. SageCircle can help AR teams by:
- Saving time – while you can learn about Twitter through trial-and-error and reading articles, SageCircle’s AR Briefing: Twitter for AR can get you up-to-speed in a fraction of the time
- Providing on-site or distance learning sessions to get AR teams up to speed on social media and how it might be adopted
- Acting as a sounding board as you brainstorm how to add social media to your AR tool box
- Advising on how to develop a pilot program to experiment with social media
- Playing the role of analyst in social media experiments and providing critiques of how the experiment went
- Through our AR Plan Builder workshop, strategists can help create AR plans that incorporate social media
Call 503-636-1500 or e-mail info (at) sagecircle dot com for more information. Also follow Carter’s commentary www.twitter.com/carterlusher and Dave’s at www.twitter.com/daveeckert to get a feel for how information is now being transmitted using micro-blogging.
Building a Community 
[…] is still very interesting and relevant. I had picked it off the bookshelf after writing about the one year anniversary of the Analyst Twitter Directory and found myself nodding in agreement as I reread […]