Because Twitter is where the conversations happen

In a post about the almost certainly fake (if it’s not there’s an intern who has locked himself in a room and is refusing to come out) Twitter account @foxmovies, Peter admits that he doesn’t get why any studio would need to be on the micro-blogging social network.

Allow me to offer a few good reasons:

Distribution: Most movie studios lack any sort of actual news distribution tool. Almost none of them have a corporate blog or offer any sorts of overall RSS feeds. While email is a fine way to communicate select news, it’s limited by the fact that people get left off distribution lists. More importantly, it doesn’t speak to the audience as a whole, just to those deemed worthy of sending the information to. And the corporate newsletters that are sent every so often are worthless if you’re looking to seriously keep up on news.

Twitter solves that problem in much the same way a corporate blog would. Anyone can follow studio’s updates – journalist, fan or both – and get the links to what’s new or interesting.

Communication: While, as I said, email continues to be a valuable tool everyone’s email inbox is too full. On Twitter there can be a conversation between the studio and the audience that is easy to follow and which becomes part of the public timeline.

But the company doing the Tweeting has to be invested not only in publishing their own updates but in following the people it should be following (more on this later) and responding when questions are asked of it. Twitter accounts that sit there with zero followers and no “@”s are the ones a lot of people will ignore.

Brand Loyalty: Studios have a big problem with brand loyalty in that they’re not the brands people are interested in – the movies are. But if, through an effective Twitter strategy, a studio can create a bit of positive brand association in the minds of the audience some of that will rub off on the movies they’re selling.

Reputation Monitoring: Ask any social media marketer worth his or her salt and they’ll tell you that one of the most important part of a Twitter strategy – or any other strategy online – is listening. You need to be aware of what people are saying and that goes double for Twitter. People might have a problem with your company but their blog is all about a unique form of South American scotch. They don’t want to interrupt that with a rant about how X studio sucks. But they’ll post a quick note or two on Twitter, and probably get a bunch of replies from people with similar experiences. You need to know what’s being said so you can respond accordingly. TVWeek has a good story on how Hulu has been doing just that.

Right now there are only two studios that I know of with official profiles on Twitter: SonyPictures and Paramount Pictures. While both have followers in the hundreds, neither seem to be very responsive, mostly just talking about the latest website or whatever and using very glowing terms for everything. That’s a good start, but I’d love to see some more responses from them to people who are coming out of movies like Benjamin Button and posting their quick thoughts. (1/7/09 Update: MGM is also on Twitter.)

Twitter can be an effective component of any company’s online strategy. Yes, there are scaling issues to consider in viewing it as a full-fledged customer service outlet, but it can be a communications touchpoint that helps connect the audience.

Note: David Armano has a similar post up on brand guidelines for Twitter.