Alberta Marketing Strategy Magazine

With Alberta rock bands, businesses, business people, cities, mayors, and foundations, everybody and everything seems to be on Twitter. But, is anything productive coming out of it? Several years ago you were probably told that you HAD to be on the Internet.

Then, during the past two years you may have thought of starting a Facebook page for your business. Lately, you may have been wondering about Twitter. For those who don’t know what Twitter is, just think of it as a simple email system with messages limited to 140 characters that get broadcast (by phone or computer) to those who “Follow” you.

We took a snap shot of some of Alberta’s top Tweeters to see how they’ve been using Twitter. Below we list the actual group, business, or person. Next to that and in brackets is the Twitter account name – just go to Twitter.com and type, for example, cbccalgary, into the Twitter search to pull up the Calgary CBC profile. The heading Followers shows how many people are subscribed to the account. Tweets is the number of messages sent over the life of the account.

Name (Twitter Name)......................... Followers............. Tweets.......... Location
Stereos (wearestereos).............................25,352..............1,196............ Edmonton
W. Brett Wilson(WBrettWilson).................15,722.............. 5,327............ Calgary
Naheed Nenshi (nenshi).......................... 10,710............. 3,937............ Calgary
Arlene Dickinson (ArleneDickinson)........10,558............ 1,306............. Calgary
CBC Calgary (cbccalgary) ...........................7,787............ 1,418............. Calgary
CBC Edmonton (cbcedmonton)................ 5,186............ 6,531............. Edmonton
City of Calgary (cityofcalgary)...................... 3,878............ 2,455............ Calgary
Alberta Teachers Asn (albertateachers).. 2,931............ 1,745............ Alberta
David Howse (davidhowse)....................... 2,631.............. 482.............. Lethbridge
Dr. David Swann (davidswann)................. 1,776...............157............. Alberta
Alberta Liberals (albertaliberals)...............1,628............ 1,063............ Calgary

For the most part, tweets from all Twitter accounts are fairly boring. Once in a while, something useful comes along. Some of the latest tweets were “New in your #ATALibrary this morning: *Teaching Secondary School Mathematics: Research and Practice for the 21st Century” and “I really love #FrogBox business - which is why Jim and I invested cold hard cash - closed a month or so ago. A good business on @CBCDragon.”

The advice I would give you is, if you think there are 100 or more people out there that want updates on your products or services, then Twitter should be a part of your marketing - just make sure to write interesting and relevant comments.. Otherwise, focus your efforts on other parts of your marketing mix.

Are you an big time Alberta Twitter user that we missed in this list? Send an email to david@davidhowsemarketing.com and maybe we can add you to the next issue.