Marketers take note: the Oxford English Dictionary officially adds "Tweet" to its pages, a sign social media is part of the English lexicon.

Skeptics that usually refrain from adopting buzzwords like Tweet and big data into their lexicons should take note – even the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has officially accepted both terms. Marketers who have been reluctant to fully embrace the social network should take this as a signal that Twitter is more than a flash in the pan, and social media content produced for the channel is an important part of branding efforts.

The 2013 OED release will include “Tweet” as a noun and verb, referring to use related to the social network. While most words must be current for a decade before OED will consider them for the book, it made an exception to the rule for the term. Also in this round of inclusions – OED added crowdsourcing, redirect, stream (verb), e-reader and mouseover to its vocabulary.

This makes sense, considering Twitter now has more than 200 monthly active users, and the site publishes 340 million Tweets every day, Brafton previously reported.

To remain competitive, marketers must invest in social media marketing on Twitter and other major channels to deliver real-time updates to customers and prospects.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.