Twitter has proven itself to be a fantastic social networking tool, but for brand marketers it presents some head-scratchers.

Sure, it’s attractive to build a following for your business. And I’m all for it. Nobody knows if this service will be the next GeoCities or the next Google, or land somewhere in the middle, but there are millions of free eyeballs out there; might as well make them yours.

That said, consider this episode, the rise of porn spam on Twitter, and, going back to March of this year (ancient history in social media terms) the Skittles experiment.

As you may recall, on March 2nd, 2009 Skittles made its Twitter page the brand’s official “comments section,” and;

Just two days after its launch, Skittles was forced to rethink its social media strategy after users deluged the site with inane and often profane “tweets,” the messages sent by Twitter users.

I am as interested in marketing experiments as the next guy, but if it was my billion-dollar brand on the line I would be hesitant before putting all of my eggs into this particular basket.

Just like with personal finance and investing, diversification is key. Using Twitter makes sense, but it needs to mesh with all of a brand’s other marketing efforts, be they directed towards TVs, computer screens, or on mobile phones.

And hey, while we’re on the subject: some musings on mobile marketing (and why it’s a lot more targeted than Twitter).

With Twitter, you can put your message out there and let people react to it as they will. The much-maligned Twitter search function will give you a rough estimate of how many Twitter users are talking about your product or brand. And that’s essentially it.

In a mobile marketing campaign:

• You control the messaging that goes to your list. That means no chance of a bogus ad or random solicitation from Ukrainian escorts.
• You control the content that can get posted on your list.
• You control the distribution of that content, and where and how it can get posted or syndicated.
• You can engage in interactive campaigns (interactive menus of multiple features, voting and polling, text-to-screen, etc.).
• You can sell mobile content directly.
• You can integrate with your CRM system to do targeted messaging to your list.
• You can analyze usage and see what features and functionality your subscribers are using.
• You have both push and pull capabilities with all of the above features.
• You can tag all of your current media with a mobile call-to-action to add accountability to your media spend, and track which channels are most effective.

One final thought.

Coca-Cola: 2,714 followers on Twitter.
MC Hammer: 1,012,348 followers on Twitter.

Nothing against Hammer, but when there’s a run on tulips it generally means something is out of whack, don’t you think?