Still Not Convinced Twitter Is For Business?
Twitter is one of those growing online phenomenons that still has some users wondering what its business application really is.
To me, the brilliance of Twitter is that it is another “media” platform: a way to communicate your message — to a super-targeted audience, because it’s 100 per cent opt-in — “tweople” on your list (Twitter people) have subscribed to read what you post (they’re your “followers”).
In that way it’s similar to opt-in email, but acts more like SMS, because the messages reach users’ Twitter accounts both on the computer and on mobile/cell phones or other internet enabled devices.
It’s simply a micro-media messaging platform within a larger media (the internet).
And it’s popularity is growing fast. It’s still not up there with Facebook, who passed the 200 millionth user mark in the last few days, Twitter is only around the 9 to 10 million user mark (so there’s plenty of room for growth)… but it has definite potential for businesses, especially with “early adopter” customers.
There was a story in the papers just today talking about Twitter’s first millionaire — the race between CNN Breaking News, Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. As of posting this article, their numbers are 960,506 for CNN Breaking News, 943,888 for Kutcher and 927,817 for Spears.
(Just in the 3 minutes checking their profiles, each of them gained 70 to 100 followers!). And yours truly the humble author has only 215 followers in TOTAL at the time of writing! Kutcher has gained over 24,000 followers since the story was published at 12:33pm today, less than 11 hours ago. CNN picked up over 12,000 and Britney over 13,000 new followers too).
I imagine the “winner” of the race will be declared in the next day or so, given the media interest — and I see from another Twitter user I follow (@WarrenWhitlock) that CNN is giving a prize to entice followers (update: so is Ashton Kutcher, for the millionth follower, if he outdoes CNN Breaking News).
Warren had a very nice way of putting it:
CNN offered (me) a prize for following them, but I follow you because I like your tweets.
Nice!
Interestingly, aside from the Spears twitter account which itself follows 77,547 people as of writing, the Kutcher and CNN accounts both follow less than 100 people (just six in the case of CNN and 72 for Kutcher). So their own Twitter feed of updates from followers is quite small (and would be easy to follow, unlike Britney’s, which would be overwhelmed by “noise” with so many other tweople being followed).
Email vs Twitter
Here’s four difference between email and Twitter, in Twitter’s favour:
Firstly, the size of the message — Twitter is limited to just 140 characters — it’s like just receiving messages a little bigger than an email Subject Line (even smaller than the 160 character limit on an SMS).
Secondly — and one major reason for the growth in followers on Twitter accounts — everyone on Twitter can see who follows you, and who you are following.
So, if you’re “one of the gurus” amongst your raving fans, very likely, because they want to be just like you, they’ll also follow the people you follow.
Thirdly — while people are more protective these days of their inbox, it doesn’t yet seem the case with Twitter, it’s easy for them to follow you because they’re in full control: they choose when to follow you — they choose when to unfollow you, there’s no need to rely on an “unsubscribe link” that you put in your emails. You can’t also send html like with email, so you can’t track “reads and open rates”, although you can see from spikes in traffic and referrer logs when users follow a Twitter link to go to a web page.
So that user control is a strong benefit to your followers.
Fourthly — reading Twitter messages is usually a “virus free” experience — although Twitter accounts do get hacked and like emails, links can be malicious and should be treated carefully (here’s an example of a Twitter “worm” virus at work just in the last few days).
Gaining Followers
Also, there’s a raging debate amongst Twitter users about following people just to get them to follow you back (and build your own list of followers — some people think it’s good Twitter etiquette to follow back, but not all users agree) — to the extent that some Twitter utilities let you follow masses of people in the hope of picking up some of them as your own followers (and they you stop following the ones that don’t reciprocate — and sometimes start/stop incessantly).
Personally, I like the idea of natural, organic growth in followers — you follow me because you’re interested in what I have to tweet about, not simply because you want me to follow you, and this is your way of getting my attention.
Also, some people have twitter pop-up every time one of their friends adds a tweet — it pops up like an automatic instant message or announcement of new email — but to me that’s a severe interruption of my day. I control when I view Twitter, and it’s only once or twice a day!
But wait, there’s more!
That millionaire race isn’t the main reason for this post!
Twitter For Business
So, can you really use this micro-messaging platform for business?
Yes you can.
So long as people know who you are, and your Twitter account can be business or organisation based (like CNN mentioned above), your followers may be following you to hear about business updates.
For example, here’s a few ways you could use Twitter from a business perspective:
- Make brief announcements. Run a recruitment agency? Tweet new job posts.
- Announce special offers — publish a coupon discount code just for your Twitter followers
- Announce your latest sale items, specials and pricing
- Announce events
- Survey your followers for their opinions on a topic of interest
- Get your followers to contribute their thoughts to an idea you have
- Link Twitter to your blog (I do this with this blog, via the Twitter Tools Wordpress plug-in). That way, your Twitter followers know when you’ve made a new blog post
- Share resources you find online with your Twitter followers
- Give tips and helpful hints via Twitter
- Run Twitter-based competitions that may involve followers finding the answer on your website (and getting to know more about your business)
- Praise staff or customers — publicly acknowledge them and say thanks
- It’s OK to have more than one account for different purposes or parts of your business. For example, CNN has both CNN and CNN Breaking News, amongst others.
- Some web applications make it easier for key people to contribute tweets to a single account, so it’s an improved way to keep the conversation going and increase the number of relevant announcements you can make to your audience
- Some businesses use Twitter to keep an open dialogue with their customers. It’s like a publicly trackable version of an instant message service, so it’s an open, transparent and instantaneous way for all to see the business’ responses.
So Twitter isn’t just all bubble and squeak — there’s useful information and communication you can have with a targeted audience.
And Google indexes tweets — so that gets into Google (so watch what you tweet!).
There’s also a script for the Firefox Greasemonkey add-on that puts real time Twitter tweet results on page one of your Google search results: again, making your Twitter activity more valuable to your business.
BakerTweet
On Springwise this week — my favourite brain juice for new business ideas — there was the story this week about BakerTweet, a device that allows bakeries to keep their customers informed — via Twitter — of when baked goods have just come fresh out of the oven … time to pop down to the bakery and get the freshest produce!
Bakers setup the device on their computer and establish a free Twitter account, and then just have the BakerTweet device installed in the kitchen (see the above video at BakerTweet). Baked goodies are fresh out of the oven, and the baker just twists the dial to the right message and presses a button — and all of their Twitter followers know there’s hot, fresh, bakery goodies ready for purchase.
It’s not hard to see how this push-button simple device makes it easy for a business to keep their customers informed!
Of course, business goes MUCH FURTHER on Twitter than just this example.
And it’s easy to see how such simplicity could later be linked to a service like Twitpic (a way to share photos via Twitter) to post both messages and images for customers to view.
Email Universe vs the Twitterverse
Despite Twitter’s popularity, this of course pales next to email in terms of the size of the media, usage and audience.
Twitter is approaching 10 million users (Comscore.com blog news from last week) — that’s UP around 700 per cent from a year ago and more than 10-times its numbers from when I joined in August 2007.
However, according to Pingdom, in 2008 there were 1.3 BILLION email users sending 210 BILLION email messages every DAY!
That’s 1,300,000,000 vs 10,000,000 — or 1,300 times more email users than Twitter users.
To Twitter Or Not To Twitter
I certainly wouldn’t ignore Twitter, as it has some helpful ways to get attention and traffic for your business. At the rate it is growing, it certainly is an audience worth considering.
Given of course email and other ways to communicate and build relationships, Twitter should still only be one small part of your overall strategy to get your message out to your audience.
If you haven’t already, sign up for your Twitter account!
Comments
Leave a Reply