Top tips: Is Twitter worth a tweet for small businesses?

Is Twitter for me?

Twitter has been one of the runaway social media success stories – it started 2009 with some 5 million users worldwide and by June 2010 it reached around 190 million registered users.  Twitter in essence is a ‘micro-blogging’ service, initially billed as the ‘SMS text network for the web’ allowing registered users to post messages of up to 140 characters.  Users post their ‘tweets’ and if the user’s information is deemed useful and interesting enough, the user will attract ‘followers’.  If you follow another Twitter user, you will get a running commentary of the tweets from that user. 

Much of the headlines around Twitter concerned celebrities, such as Stephen Fry’s prolific use of Twitter, regularly updating his 1.5 million followers with the details of his everyday life.  From a business viewpoint, Twitter could be easily dismissed as something for social chat and of little value for businesses, but that would be not giving Twitter the credit it deserves. 

Your first Tweets

Many businesses have set-up Twitter accounts and then haven’t used them, not sure how to engage with a medium that is perceived as being for social purposes.  For the majority of businesses, it makes sense to go on to Twitter only when you have something relevant to say, and ignore the social running commentary approach.   Twitter also acts as a pointer to all of your other social media activity, if you have a new product, offer or article for instance, announce it on Twitter and link in to your web site, Facebook or Linked In.  Services such as Linked In and Facebook can also be set-up to carry your Twitter messages to replicate your Twitter output across other services.  Use a service such as TinyURL which shortens long web links to a short web link to save valuable Twitter characters.

Gaining a following

The name of the game with Twitter is to build up your network of followers, the people who are interested in what you are saying.  It is also important for your business to ask people if you can follow them – this is a key method for building your Twitter network as 75% of people you follow will then in return follow you back.  One of the early difficulties with Twitter was trying to search for people that are of interest to you and your business.  Typing in key words to search on often brings a long, long list of irrelevant tweets.  ‘Twibes’ emerged as a third party application which allowed the formation of groups of Twitterers with a common interest, and this did grow initially but is now being evolved into Twitter Lists. Twitter Lists are fairly new and has been developed by Twitter to allow users to start following a domain relevant Twitter List rather than individuals. To get included on a Twitter List, quality keyword rich Tweets are essential to attract the attention of a list creator.  Twitter Lists can be created by anyone, so for a business look to create the de facto standard Twitter list for your domain expertise by combining your own Twitter accounts and other relevant Twitterers.  

Moving on with Twitter

Companies are selling on Twitter.  Stephanie Nelson is famous on Twitter for being Dell’s employee public face for their dedicated Twitter sales outlet called DellOutlet.  With sales passing $6.5m and 1.5 million followers, Dell sells discounted and end-of-line computers through Twitter.  Kodak, with employee Jennifer Cisney provides customer service and advice through Twitter, helping customers to use their Kodak cameras and delivering support.  From a small business perspective, help your sales by creating a following of potential prospects.  Also it is worth searching and responding to people who are in the market for a product or service as there are many Tweets which start “I am looking for a.....” – if your response is relevant and timely you have a potential hot sales lead. 

Twitter is still fast growing and full of potential for businesses.  It complements and supports other social media activity such as LinkedIn and Facebook to build your presence further.  It offers another route for your customers to talk to you, acts as a forum for your thought leadership content and can generate sales and help your customer service.  It’s not just for Stephen Fry...

David Holt is Business Development Manager for social media technology specialists, Amplify. 

Visit http://www.dthomas.co.uk/amplify/default.htm

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