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Over the past year or more, you have probably heard your fair share of people telling you that you need to use Twitter if you hope to have business success. It’s true that there are a great many opportunities and potential benefits to using the service, but do you have to use it? Well, that depends.
Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think.
In a recent interview with WebPronews, SiteLogic‘s Matt Bailey said what a lot of people are probably thinking. You don’t have to use Twitter.
Frankly, it’s pretty astonishing how loyal Twitter users are considering the service’s frequent downtime and over-capacity errors. There are plenty of other ways that you could go. In this day and age there are so many marketing opportunities online, it’s ridiculous. However, they require time, and if you’re going to focus a significant amount of your time on one, you better make sure it’s a legitimate way of getting results.
This of course depends on the goals penis enlargement you have and the strategies you implement. As Matt says in the interview, "you need to have a consistent marketing strategy," and you should slow down and look at your marketing plan.
I’ve written before about 8 reasons you need to stop ignoring Twitter, but perhaps that title could’ve been toned down a bit. Think of these things as reasons that Twitter could be a good tool to consider using, because Matt’s right. You don’t HAVE to use Twitter. People are still running successful businesses without it. That said, it does have some advantages. The 8 reasons I discussed in that article were:
1. Twitter Lists
2. The Openness of Twitter
3. Building Valuable Relationships
4. Traffic That Cares
5. Staying Current
6. Connecting with Local Customers
7. Going International and Multi-lingual
8. It’s Still Young
Matt makes a valid point. Twitter may not be the "it" thing this time next year. It may still be as relevant as ever, but times change. I’m sure you remember when MySpace was the king of the social networks. MySpace is still around and heavily used, but it is often overshadowed in discussion by Facebook and Twitter.
Consider your goals (here are some possible ones). If Twitter fits into them, use it. If not, maybe it’s not worth the time. If you want to use MySpace to meet your goals, you might be able to do that.
Twitter is showing a lot of potential though. The company kicked off the new year with a bunch of new hires (including some former Googlers), and is really looking toward monetization and becoming more useful for businesses. With the opening of the firehose, a lot of new and existing apps are going to make it possible to do a lot of new and cool things with Twitter. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone expects Twitter to reach a level of billions of tweets per second.
Do you think Twitter is mandatory for businesses? Share your thoughts.
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It’s a complete and total waste of time… I’m sorry. I invested some time into it believing that it was actually a little bit more than a chat room. But it’s not.
There is just so many other opportunities which take substantially less time investment. I won’t even get into the technical factors.
Totally agree. Still don’t get why it’s popular. What can you possibly keep twittering about? What you did all day long? Unless you are in the gossip business or media, what the heck do you keep saying about your business or your life? I couldn’t even dream up what to say everyday. Texting also amazes me. How many forms of written communication that’s impersonal do we need? If you want to say something to someone, pick up the phone an call. Wow what a neat concept….actually talking to someone one on one.
I don’t wonder why it is popular, I try and see how I can use that popularity. I tried on iCQ and failed, Twitter offers more possibilities.
Not saying that Facebook is stupid, it’s actually a nice idea and people do connect with people that they haven’t heard from in years. I had my business on it and it did nothing for me. If you have a website and blog that gets more traffic than a facebook page, at least for mine. But the whole big deal about it amazes me too like its a new concept or something. Myspace has been around longer and started the whole social networking thing. Facebook is just the more adult version of myspace who has a lot of teens on it.
As with any social media strategy, one of the biggest things that companies have in accepting is that social media connecting and relationship-building takes time, commitment, consistency and objectives. Companies easily fall into the trap of rushing to the next big thing and then not know what to do with it, hence, they get frustrated. In the end, Twitter is a powerful tool to communicate and connect, if it is done right, that is, authentically, honestly and with a stated goal. The mistakes happen when companies start on Twitter without a strategy. Also, yes, it is just one strategy and yes, you have to make sure all your anchor pages are working, but the real essence of Twitter is the ability to reach out and communicate with anyone. If companies realize that this medium can serve how they promote their true company personality, then it actually has strong potential. We should know, without Twitter, our business would not be where it is at today. It isn’t, of course, the only tool out there, but it is a good one.
Nice post.
There’s always gonna be something new. It can be another piece of the puzzle, although it won’t make or break you.
In my experience, one of the crucial things is to NOT tweet about yourself and what you did all day long. Tweet about things that your followers will find interesting – something they could benefit from. Whether it be interesting news, something that’ll make them laugh, important updates they should be aware of, etc.
I try not to tweet about myself too much, especially from my business twitter account. I can’t handle the twitterers that are constantly telling me they’re going to have another cup of tea…
I have no illusions about my “followers” actually being more than passingly interested in me as a person. They follow me because I provide information, and that’s what creates traffic. Will it be profitable at the end of the day? Not sure, but it’s a cheaper way of attracting traffic than most PPCs I know. Fast, too.
NEXT BIG THING! ….yawn.
Twitter, like Facebook, MySpace and SEO companies are always THE HOT thing to do.
Look at the big boys in industry. Does Warren Buffet tweet? Is there a Facebook page for General Dynamics? Does Bausch + Lomb have a MySpace page? Does Apple employ a SEO company?
Answer? No.
Why?
Well some could argue they just don’t get it. And others will say they already are well know and don’t need it.
Myself I look at it this way.
The big boys don’t do it because all Facebook and MySpace does is make a cheap website and domain for people that are either too poor or too lazy to build and maintain a site. These two sites are the Geocities and Tripod of the so-called Web 2.0 generation.
Twitter is just a cheap and easily spammable version of IM or Live Chat. So you just put Live chat on your site and voila! Instant contact with your customers. And it doesn’t get a fail whale because it is being bogged down by NON-customers posting I ate a subway nom nom nom.
The old adage is there is NOTHING new under the sun. And it is true. Everything “web 2.0″ is a reinvention of “web 1.0″ and “web 0.0″.
IM, internet video and radio, free personal sites with ads, peer to peer file sharing, social networking… old old old. From newsgroups to message boards and BBS’, Geocities, Tripod, AOL IM, etc. etc.
Hey if you have a shoestring budget and can’t afford a site and live chat; go for it. But after time when you DO make it, you will have to leave it behind as it will not suit your needs.
Besides, why would you want your customers to have to wade through “Just took my dog to the vet, he got a sad” tweet to make contact with you? Akin to sending messages with semaphore at a Flag Day parade.
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I have a web site wildernesscalls.com and I have tried all kinds of networking. When I got into the twitter area, it seemed to me that the only people that got your twits were people you know. The people I know all ready visit the site, so where is the benefit of twitting. I have found that networking in the form of a blog. has been more profitable for my business.
Total waste of time.
Twitter if you analyse deeply, it only make benefit for branded and bigshot company like Dell, Microsoft, Sony etc… Also it is helpful to make fans for celebrities…But apart from that, it is very less useful to generate traffic and sales for a small company… One of the big problem with twitter is that the tweets are not well organized …to me it feels like if i have to find some interesting tweets, then there a sea of tweet which has to be searched…
I think it’s a great tool for creating backlinks to your website. Other than that, I still don’t get the giss of it yet…
Interesting to talk about Twitter and the technique, but you must never forget it
Frequent downtimes? There have been some Fail Whales that last a few seconds but there haven’t been downtimes like existed in May-June 2008. Maybe it’s the Twitter client that you use because the website has been working fine 99.99% of the time.
OK – so I started on Twitter hoping that I could grow a following and possibly build some customer loyalty. Started out strong, but the last six months have only been about logging on to block spammers… and I have yet to read a post from anyone that I am following that matters one bit in my life. Seems like the only thing Twitter is good for are some celebrities to post that they’re giving their dog a bath and the fans can go “Ooh! She’s washing her dog!!”
Very dumb.
Not yet, but in the future probably. It’s so popular because of it’s functionallity ( hi5 stuff, facebook, getting new friends, girlfriends maybe ), but don’t know if you can get traffic ( targeted ), today… in the future, don’t know. Well see.
Have tried twitter from the start and although it seems like a glorified chatroom site it does do it in a better way than most.
I totally agree with what abby said, “Interesting Perspective”. I use twitter for my website and it works fine. I have a personal twitter account, and its not so good. This is really informative though. I wonder what social media will emerge on the coming years..
Everything depends on the target demographic. Marketing on the web is no different than way back in the middle ages when the town crier went to the town square and rang his bell to promote the blacksmith. He went to the town square because that’s where the people were. If they’re on Twitter today than that’s a viable tool for promotion. The key is to have a tracking convention. Without tracking and benchmarking of results how do you know if you’re successful?
@CPollittIU
http://www.seofortwayne.com
It’s worse then a waste of time. It’s time taken away from something that might contribute to actually producing something worthwhile. It’s for the 20′s ad 30′s somethings who don’t have a clue as to how to actually contribute to the community and have an inflated idea that anyone is actually interested in what they’re doing. Give Twitter a few years and suddenly everyone will realize it is unnecessary and it will die. Been there, done that, bye, bye!
I think Twitter is cool, but I think it is overrated and oversaturated. I really believe that….. it is just TOO MUCH. Too many people.. and a lot of spam.
By the time you’ve waded through the ovecapacity errors and blocked all the spam followers you’d be forgiven for wondering how anyone can use it all
I try and join every site possible and was an early member of Youtube,Facebook, MY Space, Twitter and many others.
I produce web and TV commercials and can credit Twitter with 2 jobs.
although thats not a lot… the advertising was free.
Almost all of my business is procured thru the internet and if a site is free I will at least join.
I hired my daughter to build up my members because its really not worth my time to do that much “tweeting”
In my line of work, I’ve found Twitter to be useless. I like to call it Facebook without the fun- just status updates, nothing more. I’ve seen people use it well- like with mobile restaurants- but the same could be accomplished with Facebook. What’s worse is most Twitter users don’t use their accounts and all and the few who do update WAY too frequently. There isn’t enough control of managing all those tweets, either. Even though I have an account, I am not a fan!
Apart from the ‘Fun’ factor, there doesnt appear to be much value in using Twitter. This is precicely why they are struggling to monetize it. There doesn’t appear to be an ‘intrinsic value’ in the service.
I agree, The only thing twitter is good for is creating brand awareness. But even then your linking to other business who, lets be honest dont really care who you are they just want as many followers as possible to look good.
Twitter’s great for example for musician’s like me who want to post their new press releases & events across the web, it’s another form of free publicity, so I guess it depends on what you do for a living. I have new Videos up all the time on YouTube & Twitter helps me cross market those.
If Twitter lives long enough to wise up, they will put context-sensitive ads in and around the tweets, like gmail does but maybe a bit more intrusive, so twitter addicts might want to pay a small yearly fee for a no-ad version. What are they waiting for?
We might advertise on such a vehicle. Tweeting to entertain and inform the tiny sliver of our customer base who actively use twitter AND happen to be watching AND catch my particular post in the fast-flowing river of nonsense, that’s not productive.
I’m glad I watched this. We’re still exploring whether or not Twitter is worth the effort.
I totally agree with James about getting back to one on one conversations but am still trying to figure out the Twitter value just in case. . .
One of my resolutions for 2009 was to leverage Twitter in my marketing mix. The result? Approx 2000 followers and a very negligible sales increase. Not worth the time IMO.
I will still keep my accounts open, and occasionally retweet when I find something interesting, but I won’t waste a second more or my valuable time trying to ‘build my brand’ or ‘grow relationships with potential and current customers’ because that is just a fallacy…
I was an early adopter of Twitter. It did not take too long for it to grow into just another venue for inane noise. I think it won’t be too long before use of Twitter will plateau and that upward graph will begin its decline.
And then there will be the next hot thing to subscribe to and use and help grow. And then boredom will set in and the cycle will perpetuate itself.
As far as I am concerned, Twitter is not the magic tool to bank your business’s growth on. Traditional media will always prevail as will blogging. I have minimised my Twitter usage to the point that yesterday I came close to deleting the account. Why didn’t I click that button and finalise my disenchantment with Twitter? Dunno. But I might click that button tomorrow or the day after. Maybe next week. Heck I’ll delay it until after 31st March yearend. Or perhaps give it a chance to redeem itself. Maybe.