The Business Web 2.0
As CEO of business-based social networking site WeCanDo.BIZ, read my take on the role Web 2.0 technologies can play helping businesses to grow.
Wednesday 3 September 2008, 2:15 PM
Tweeting for business - can it work?
I must admit up front that I remained a Twitter sceptic for a long time. To me, "tweeting" seemed little more than a pointless instant message sent out to the ether, with no knowledge of who was reading it so little ability to make it relevant. Bored rigid of reading people's banal status messages on Facebook (and this was from friends!), I was keen to sign up to something that gave me every piece of detail of a stranger's day.
I am on Twitter now and I can't say I am a full convert, but I have picked up some useful business tips using it. And my use involves a panel in my iGoogle dashboard which tells me what everyone I follow is up to; Twitterrific on my iPhone which gives me all updates when I am mobile; Ping.fm which syncs my tweets up with most of the other social media I am on which allows statuses (Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendfeed included); a link between the Biz Needs RSS feed on my website that broadcasts our members most urgent business needs; and now Twitterise for scheduling marketing tweets at regular intervals to all followers (which Ping.fm then takes out to everywhere else). You could say I am using it!
And all of these things are great. Almost anyone who comes into touch with my via the internet can now find out what I am up to, what news we have to share at WeCanDo.BIZ, plus the needs of our members (which become leads for everyone else). I can watch our Clicky webstats page and see the users coming in, all direct from enticing tweets we sent out to them. It is producing clicks.
But whereas clicks from Google will have some level of qualification to them, that is, someone has searched on something we have on our site, how qualified is the audience I am broadcasting to using the above tools? My tweets extend beyond my 30-odd Twitter followers, most of whom I have picked up word of mouth (or whatever you'd call copying someone you follow by following who they follow) to 100 Facebook friends, 330 LinkedIn contacts, 50 people at Plaxo, the community at Mashable and more. But I have little control over who could be in that community; and am I abusing my personal connections by so obviously marketing to them? What do I even know about their buying habits? How targeted are they are a market?
OK, tweeting costs no money, but issuing updates throughout the day takes time. And how do I know that is time well spent?
I have a feeling many people are clicking through because of curiosity rather than any commercially measurable interest. Does anyone think any different? I'd love to read your thoughts...
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
PreviousComments on this post
Hi Ian,
I’m exactly in the same boat as you. Measuring the effectiveness of Twitter is obviously difficult in terms of the time spent versus reward, but I have been using it recently and have received some great contacts/work out of it.
For me, Twitter can be used as an effective business tool if you can tap into the right contacts. Largely, I think, because you’re entering the personal space of an individual – if you can continue a thread about something that’s personal to someone you're following you’re well on your way... I don’t use it for friends so much, but for ‘keeping tabs’ on what colleagues/competitors are up to, and I find it fascinating.
