By now you’ve most likely heard about Twitter, the online social network that lets people express their thoughts in 140 characters or less. Until recently, Twitter was a phenomenon that was only of interest to Internet professionals, but all that is changing quickly. You see, last week Oprah started using Twitter. The service had already reached 13 million users worldwide and was the fastest growing network on the Internet. The so-called “Oprah effect” resulted in 500,000 to 1 million new Twitter users. All that to say, Twitter is now mainstream.

Twitter is part of a larger phenomenon called social media, which is nothing more than people networking and sharing their thoughts with their friends, family and others who share common interests. Here’s a great video that explains what social media is in simple terms.

Other social media networks you probably already knew about include:

• Facebook – more than 200 million users (100 million daily users)
• MySpace -  around 60 million users
• YouTube – 73 million unique visitors per day
• LinkedIn – 15.8 million users (mostly white-collar professionals)
• Flickr – 25 million unique visitors per day
• Blogs (not a site, so much as a category) – 900,000 new blog posts each day; blogs are read by 55% of active Internet users

The list above is just the tip of the iceberg. The only point here is to ground you in the sheer size of the social media phenomenon.

What it means to you
Given that social media is essentially about individual Internet users posting their own thoughts, photos, videos, etc., it is an ideal source for marketers who want to understand what consumers are thinking about (and possibly what they think of your bank).

What you learn by “listening” to social media can help you prepare more relevant content for your marketing campaigns or your digital signage network. By being more aware of what your customers are talking about, you might be able to tailor your in-branch content to grab their interest. Here are just some ways in which you might incorporate social media into your marketing routine:

• Listen for negative commentary – When consumers don’t like what your company is doing, they’re more likely to say so online to their friends and contacts than to you. Motrin found out this a few months ago. If you detect a consumer backlash you can respond accordingly.
• Listen for rave reviews – Even better yet, you might find that some consumers love your new product or service. If so, you could actually create a digital signage spot that features favorable tweets.
• Watch for general trends – Some of the monitoring sites mentioned below will help you keep up on what folks are talking about online. This can be helpful if you are looking for ideas for in-branch campaigns that piggyback on a popular trend (e.g., Earth Day, Susan Boyle, Twilight, etc.)
• Find reusable content – A good percentage photo and video content online is posted under a Creative Commons license and allows for commercial reuse free of charge.

How to become a social media spy
So, how does one go about listening? There are many, many sites and tools available for snooping. Below are some basic tools, selected for their potential usefulness to retail marketers.

• Addictomatic – A great starting point if you’ve had little exposure to social media monitoring. Addictomatic is basically a search engine that scans multiple social media networks (most of the ones above and a few others) and shows you the most recent mentions of your search term. I recommend trying a few different search terms and comparing the results. You’ll probably notice that some searches produce more useful results than others.
• Compfight – This is a tool for searching the millions of photos that have been posted to Flickr. Just change the setting at top to “Commercial.” Then enter your search term. The resulting photos are all available for reuse in your marketing campaigns. For example, here are the results for a search on “Seattle.” Of course, you should make sure you understand how Creative Commons works before you reuse any content.
• Digg – Digg is a social news site that lets users share and vote on news articles, blog posts, etc. And it’s a terriffic barometer of public sentiment. For example, looking at Digg’s listing of top Business and Finance articles, we see one on how to save money during the recession. Additional searches might confirm that frugality is indeed a hot topic. What could you do in your marketing to tap this sentiment?
• Facebook Lexicon – Given the sheer number of users on Facebook, it’s a shame we don’t have better access to content search and analysis tools, but it is a proprietary network, so we have to settle for what Facebook is willing to provide. And for the moment, it’s Lexicon, which is under development. For now, Lexicon provides some prefab searches on terms like “republican,” “democrat,” and “superbowl,” which are only marginally helpful. Let’s hope the tool matures before the Facebook phenom dies out.
• Google Alerts – Enter any search terms and Google will provide you with continual or periodic updates of any mentions it picks up on blogs, video sites, in the news and even on Twitter (although it’s coverage of Twitter appears a little shaky).
• Tweetstats – See the most popular subjects on Twitter displayed visually.
• Tweetmeme or Twitturly – Like a mix of Twitter search and Digg, these sites show the most popular links being shared on Twitter.
• Twitter search – Enter any search term to see the most recent posts (or “tweets” as they’re called) by Twitter users. To conduct a similar search on two or three different search terms at once, try using Monitter.

Got any tips for fellow bank marketers?
One of the amazing (and frustrating) aspects of social media is that it is growing and changing all the time. You simply can’t be aware of every network, site and monitoring tool. So, if you have found a tool or site that has helped you raise your social media awareness — and improve your marketing — please let us know!

See also: How to use free online research to feed your offline marketing

Photo credit: Beard Papa