Alexz Johnson Island

I was undecided about whether or not to try to utilize Twitter’s Trending Topics in Operation: Hurricane. For those who don’t use Twitter, Twitter is a real time service that lets people update their status, kind of like Facebook. This update is broadcast to every person who “Follows” that person. Celebrities obviously have a lot of followers, particularly the highly publicized Ashton Kutcher.

Twitter also has a popularity feed they use called Trending Topics. This real time updating feed tracks Twitter for the most popular items going on at Twitter at the time. Typically, hashtag entries make the list. A hashtag entry is a term of no more than 3 words beginning with a number sign(#). If you click on that hashtag Twitter will send you to their Search Results Page of Twitter Search of that tag. Usernames, like @alexzjohnson, can not become Trending Topics. This is what Alexz’s currently looks like.

That’s great. I know most of you know all this, but believe it or not, there are people who aren’t using Twitter yet.

I maintain my stance that currently, using Twitter this way in the state that it’s in, would not be beneficial or helpful to Alexz. Why?

The vast majority of the messages people would find if they clicked on #alexzjohnson if she were a Trending Topic would be uninformative posts about her designed to make her Trending. No content, no benefit. Quite a few link to her official site. This is where I can see the possible benefit, but Alexz’s Index page currently does not point to any content either. It’s just the first page before you see the rest of her site. So, here, I’d suggest the link instead link to her music/video page. It’s important, that should she become a Trending Topic only good informative posts show up that would benefit her most, and in this case, you can’t top her music.

However, not everyone even looks at the Trending Topics. I typically use TwitterFox myself when I tweet, so I rarely see the actual site itself. With services like Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Tweetie and countless others there is little reason for anyone to visit the actual site. Twitters posts sent “from web” can nowadays been the result of people using outside scripts using Twitter’s API, which lowers the possibility THOSE people are even actually seeing the Trending Topics.

For these reasons, I can’t say making our girl a Trending Topic would be good or even beneficial for her.

Those actively doing these tweets need to remember the end goal in mind. Let them know who she is, get them interested, send them to a page where they can learn more. I think it would be easier to turn all your followers in Alexz fans simply by keeping her on their minds with songs and video clips than to make her a Trending Topic and hope someone finds an informative post among the tweets designed to give her +1 mention in the searches for a Trending Topic. Alexz is so loved because of her ability to connect with people in all kinds of ways. Remember how YOU became a fan. Real impact happens one person at a time as she touches them in a way they didn’t know music could do. Trending Topics is currently a spaghetti method, where we’d be throwing a lot of Tweets at the wall and hoping one of them sticks to a few people.

I DO post about Alexz using the #alexzjohnson tag from time to time, but the goal isn’t to make her Trending, I just wanted to tell the search engines she’s got a lot of fans on Twitter 🙂 “Alexz Johnson” without the # sign can become Trending too. If we can get THAT to Trend, the chance of real conversation would be much higher, and I think more people would be interested, since it would come naturally from conversations across the network.

Well, that’s my piece about Twitter. I like the idea, but after thinking about it, I don’t see it being helpful.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.