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Twitter: Will it really help your business?
Twitter: Will it really help your business?
May 27, 2009
So I’ve finally given in and opened a Twitter account. But I remain ambivalent. And many of my contacts, including some seasoned digital professionals, share my doubts - as do some high-profile commentators. Why am I bitter about Twitter? Here’s a handy bullet-point list of my issues with it.
As a copywriter, I dislike the telegraphic, SMS-like brevity of the Tweet, and the incomprehensible stuff that sometimes gets Tweeted. As a tired thirtysomething, I’m wearied by its jittery fragmentation and grating, self-conscious ‘Hey there!’ chirpiness. As an SEO, I resent its ‘nofollow’ links, particularly when LinkedIn (a PR7 site) grants me backlinks with editable anchor text. As a business person, I’m irritated by its founders’ arrogant ‘not for sale’ posturing, despite the manifest lack of a business model (unless we count making TV shows). And finally, as a human, I question whether we should be measuring our worth by all this virtual interaction.
‘Forget that,’ you say. ‘How can I make money from Twitter?’ Future ways to profit directly from Twitter might include charging for your content, pimping it out to third-party advertisers or using it to promote exclusive special offers. Indirectly, it’s all about getting yourself noticed, building credibility and educating potential customers about your offering, which should drive interest and therefore sales. For those who have a large base of users or contacts they need to keep updated, it’s indispensable. But for marketing, it remains to be seen whether you really do reach potential customers, or just other Twitterers who are looking to sell rather than buy, or to Tweet rather than read. For example, a survey reported in Marketing Week (print only) found that just six out of 2600 followers responded to a Tweet saying 'has anyone seen this tweet, please answer yes'. Is anyone listening? Even so, sheer weight of numbers means the risks of being left out outweigh the hassle of getting involved. But I still suspect that many businesses are just following (as it were), without being 100% sure why. And I include myself in that. Will Twitter itself make money? It’s a truth universally acknowledged that anyone with tons of users will cash in, and Twitter certainly is a big hitter. But a large user base is no guarantee – look at Facebook’s spiralling costs (storage alone is $100m pa), funding worries and struggles to generate clickthrough from its advertising. It's a victim of its own success: people visit Facebook to socialise, not to buy things. With 60% of Twitterers drifting away within a month, it could be a challenge to get advertisers to do more than fling some content at Twitter in hope rather than expectation. (Twitter Search could be part of the answer.) It all reminds me of that other flash-in-the-pan site that appeared a few years ago. Very plain interface, childish colours and a silly name - something like ‘Google’…
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Comments
Twitter is just part of the marketing mix and like its paid predecessors shouldn't be evaluated alone. Face-to-face networking and on-line networking such as LinkedIn, blogs and micro-blogs such as Twitter all present different ways to demonstrate your personality, skills and experience, drive traffic to your website and contribute to the decision making process to buy from you - assuming of course that these tools reach your potential clients.
Impressive Gary. Perhaps I should reiterate that I am on Twitter, and hoping it will deliver benefits.
Since the debate smoulders on, let me chuck another log on the fire: http://bit.ly/38lRKg
I think the fact you really need to download an additional 'front end' tool to manage Twitter effectively may be a barrier for many.
Interesting debate Tom.
Reviewing how Twitter has benefitted my sales training business since joining eight months ago has been quite illuminating.
Through Twitter I have:
1.Gained significant five figure training contracts for free
2.Developed several joint ventures
3.Been interviewed as an expert in sales and negotiation
4.Launched products to help me break out of the time/money trap
5.Learnt tons of new things about marketing my business
6.Discovered new people
7.Grown my customer list
8.Increased the circulation of my newsletter (http://www.paradigmtraining.co.uk/news/ )
9.Been invited to speak at business events and conferences. (http://garygorman.wordpress.com/speaking-events/ )
10.Had lots of fun with a supportive network of friends.
Anyone not including social media in their overall marketing mix is,I believe, missing a trick.
Regards,
Gary
http://www.twitter.com/garygorman
Well written post, the internet tends to be full of garbage these days, so good work and keep giving out useful content.
Thanks for all the comments. I am, of course, playing devil's advocate to an extent. (Although I note that no-one has responded with a quantifiable RoI from Twitter...)
Since I posted, I've noted that I can get new followers just by posting random stuff about soup, or the sun shining. This intensifies my doubts that anyone is really interested in my business, and hence on a general level whether the site will ever have any real 'seriousness' about it.
'Understand that what you feel Twitter should be used for, may not be where it actually excels.' - Good point. I'm ready to be proved wrong, but for now I speak as I find. Time will tell...
It would seem that you see the usefulness of the site, and yet, you aren't fully embracing it. Remember, Myspace is still free. Those that don't understand the Twitter phenomenon are doomed to be left behind, and it seems that's what you're advocating.
Understand that what you feel Twitter should be used for, may not be where it actually excels.
Fair play Tom - it's about time somebody shot Twitter down! Yes - everyone's right - it has its uses and actually it can be a good marketing tool if networking is a key acquisition tool for your business. You can get access to some really interested resources that you wouldn't ordinarily get access to. It's a bit like having access to everybody's bookmarks all on one screen... However, it's not that revolutionary let's face it and there's generally a lot of inane twaddle there that adds to the joys of information overload. Thanks Victor for your pleasingly humbug view!
Twaddict?
Thanks for the article, definitely some good food for thought there. Equally, I enjoyed the comments from others, since I joined Twitter 2 days ago and therefore still debating its use and what it is that I'm supposed to be doing with it.
I joined not because I believed that it would be an effective marketing tool for my business, but because I was curious what all the fuss was about- simple as that. These days, there are so many new ways to reach customers (or maybe just find them and look at them and see their faces and find out who they are and what they care about) that I couldn’t afford to miss out.
Given my experiences so far, I will definitely stick with Twitter and play with the kinds of messages people respond to. I feel that I am about to crack the code of how to make Twitter work for me and my company, and I just love the anticipation.
Interesting that you say you're wearied by twitter as a tired thirtysomething when 42% of users are aged 35-49, and almost a quarter are over 55 (according to Nielsen). They be some chirpy old folk.
I'm not a Twaddict by any standards, but I've used a bit of twitter to network with potential clients and suppliers. It's also an interesting medium through which to monitor what people are saying about your business/clients and their competitors.
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