Twitter- an expanded thought

My last post dealt with the importance of Social Media and business in general and dispelled the thought that social media was just a fad that will come and go like the pet rock, Vanilla Ice, and parachute pants.

I wanted to take the time to expand a bit on just one form of Social Media–Twitter.

I read an interesting e-newsletter from a pretty smart internet marketer by the name of John Reese today. (I’ve learned about some pretty cool stuff from this newsletter so if you want to subscribe, you can click here. It’s free and I don’t know him so I’m not pawning you off on some product, although he does occasionally sell stuff)

ANYWAY, he recently shut down his Twitter account which had over 25,000 followers. This counter-intuitive thinking prompted the thoughts I’ll write here.

First, I don’t claim to know the best way to use Twitter. I don’t make claims that Twitter is the new “hotness” or that Twitter will transform your business. Hell, I don’t even claim that I use Twitter that well. (At the time of this posting i have only 441 followers) That said, I know that I use Twitter differently that even many of my friends do.

I use Twitter to watch. I’m a Twitter voyeur if you will. I watch how big companies interact with their clients. I watch how start-ups and local companies spread their message. I watch people tweet mindless babble out into the ether. I watch businesses get on Twitter and screw it up royally. And occasionally I tweet, normally to friends and people around me locally. But that’s just how I use Twitter. Everyone has their own approach.

The larger, expanded question here (and this is something I’ve wrestled back and forth with quite a bit) is the amount of time people spend on Twitter (for business purposes for the sake of this blog) worth it? Largely, I’d have to say no. But there’s a very large caveat here.

The caveat is that it depends on HOW the company is using Twitter and WHO they have using it. Done correctly, I’ve seen big business use Twitter to defuse potentially negative scenarios and win over new customers. I’ve seen small businesses successfully put customers in their stores and stimulate buzz. Done poorly, I’ve seen other businesses use Twitter as social hour (or hours…) and I’ve seen their social use of Twitter hurt their business and turn potential customers away.

The great thing about big companies is that they have the budget to hire a “Social Media Director” or some other person whose primary function is to understand Social Media, the internet, and how best to use it to build customer relations. The downside for many start-ups and small businesses is that they can’t afford to hire a full-time Social Media wiz that they trust with the voice of their company. That usually means the owner becomes the voice.

If you own a small company, and you are on Twitter 4 hours a day, off and on, with TweetDeck running in the background, how is that affecting you? Twitter can become a huge vacuum of time and accomplishment and this is something to carefully watch for. You can become dependent on checking your smart phone for Twitter updates and it can have a negative affect on your focus and accomplishment. As John Reese points on his newsletter, Twitter can also become a high school-esque EGO fest where he/she with the most followers has a superiority complex. Nothing good comes from that nonsense.

So for the reader who uses Twitter, my advice is to monitor your Twitter usage. For one week, take the time to document how often you are on Twitter. You may just be shocked how much time you use. ( I recently clocked my usage of Twitter for just one day and was amazed that I spent nearly 3 hours on Twitter in one form or another). Once you have a number, an average amount of time you spend on Twitter, ask yourself, is it worth it? What is the payoff?

These can be difficult questions to answer because some of the payoff from actively using Twitter is qualitative, not quantitative. New friendships, social invites, discounts to your favorite restaurant that you wouldn’t have know about otherwise, these things are important but hard to measure. Remember, we are focusing on Twitter for business here, so try to think in terms of how you used Twitter to build relationships that resulted in sales, new customers, new business. Again, since there are no “Twit-alytics” that can super accurately measure sales, this will take some close monitoring.

I guess the real answer here is that there is no cut and dry answer. If you have 25,000 followers on Twitter, I certainly would not recommend closing your Twitter account. At the minimum you’ve built a herd of followers who could potentially be customers, blog readers, referral sources or JV partners. But I would suggest monitoring your usage and at least try to be honest with yourself about how successfully or unsuccessfully you are using Twitter for your business. (By the way, even if you “just use Twitter for personal use” it could be cutting into your work time, big time)

Until next time,

-Brian