I was reading a post titled, Marketers Like Twitter More Than Consumers Do

This excerpt caught my eye:

The firm says that about 45% of marketers polled felt Twitter will grow exponentially, while two thirds of consumers said they didn’t have an opinion, and only 12% of the latter said it is something young people and the media will use. Eight percent of consumers said Twitter is already a digital has-been.

Consumers can’t dismiss something before they have even learned about it right? And yet it strikes me that perhaps we as marketers and thinkers have not done enough in explaining what Twitter is. Or perhaps Twitter has done a poor job in articulating what Twitter is and can do?

A step in the right direction was the recent release of Twitter 101 for business, but before we can prime a business on the benefits of what social media and or Twitter can do for them, perhaps we should take even less time and just ask what they want. In other words, instead of starting by explaining what social media is..we take the business challenge at hand, and see if we can mold a social media solution to that business challenge. If there is not a fit, and in some instances, that just might be the case…we move on.

But beyond that, the last statement in the above mentioned post struck a nerve with me and it was a comment by Harris Interactive and it was this:

“It is the advertisers and marketers who should play the lead role in promoting consumer education if they truly want to move Twitter beyond infancy and into its tween years.”

So I ask you this. Are we giving consumers what they want? Do they know what they want? Or are we giving them what we think they want?