I attended last night's taping of The Colbert Report, and during audience Q&A ahead of the show, I had the chance to let Stephen Colbert (@stephenathome) know my followers believe he needs to tweet more. His response and our back-and-forth dialog, while hilarious, also brought up some serious questions in my mind about the merits of Twitter, challenging me to answer his question back at me:
That's a really good question. Of course, unable to answer him specifically and quickly enough, I fell back on a more general response, babbling something about it being a place to connect with loyal fans, be a part of their daily lives and grow them into a more avid fan base.
But, at the time, I didn't think my off-the-cuff response answered the most critical question he posed to me, that "[Twitter] takes a lot of time...how does that get me more viewers?"
What I realized is my quick retort was actually perfect. Twitter's at it's best when you're using it in one of two ways; first, as a means of doing something online requiring a short mobilization timeframe and second, as a means of providing daily updates and reminders to interested parties -- keeping them involved in your daily activities. For Stephen Colbert, and others with a built-in base of followers, Twitter's not really a tool for growing viewers, it's for engaging and mobilizing them.
Think about the meme-expanding possibilities of follower real-time action to online pursuits like Colbert's Operation Humble Kanye. Fan-bases in the internet age are much tighter when they feel like they're a part of the action. Twitter is the best tool to make his fan base work with each other and take collective action online, driving views, chatter and sharing. During the time his show is not on air, he can be using his Twitter audience to make his online efforts more successful.
So Stephen, I'm sticking by my guns and the truthiness of my statement -- tweet more, it'll help you keep your loyal fans and get more out of them. Plus, how can you let Ashton Kutcher beat you in followers? You gonna let him Punk you like that? I'm just sayin ;)
