Basel: I guess we just touched base on that, but how about a startup? You're a startup and you want to use Twitter to market your startup? Any tips on going about that?
Othman: I think it's still very much the same aspect, because at the end of the day, the product is very simple, right? It's a very lightweight way to engage in a very scalable manner. It's like Twitter has most effectively created an audience that you ever had. And so, focus on interacting with the audience. You see, for example, people who are big celebrities, you'll see people who are very famous, that have five million followers, like two sets, but one of them always starts responding to people, and those things like that, and tweets regularly and tweets interesting things and not just … .
You can be a celebrity and have a lot of followers and you can tweet a link to your CD on Amazon every week, but that doesn't bring that engagement. Because there you're not really using that audience. But you can have someone with the same number, but that whenever they tweet, like Lady Gaga is amazing. She is always really engaging with her users and interacts with them, and those are examples where I think you get that scale.
About the Guest:
Othman is co-founder and President of GeoAPI.com / Mixer Labs.
Before Mixer Labs, Othman was at Google, where he managed a number of products including the Google Toolbar, Google Gears, early Firefox extensions, as well FastNet (real-time fetching and caching infrastructure). Prior to Google, Othman was at ACCESS Systems, where he ran server-side engineering. Othman currently serves as the director international and growth at Twitter.
Othman has an MBA from MIT and a BS + MS in Computer Science & Industrial Engineering from Stanford.
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Using Twitter To Market Startups
Othman Laraki talks about how to use Twitter as a marketing tool for startups.
