You’ll read lots of blogs, articles and comment about the true value of using social networking sites. Scribes pen them every day, often trying to evaluate the worth of sites through a series of metrics, demographics and all the way down to how long your average user stays online.
Whilst such articles have their place, and a value, they tend to miss some fundamental advantages that such media give. For the purpose of this article we’ll focus on Twitter because of the undoubted attention it has gained in the last 12 months and its colossal growth.
So, why should every company use Twitter?
Here is the truth of the matter:
1. Brand awareness – companies employ PR and advertising agencies, spend billions every year on marketing and dedicate huge resources to strengthening brand aware or communicating a message to their existing and potential user base. The simple fact is that Twitter gives you the ability to do it for nothing – at the moment. All it asks is your time and thought, nothing more. However, Twitter is exploring ways of growing its revenue at present and you can be categorically assured that companies advertising or promoting their wares is going to figure in their grand plan.
2. Consumer trends – Twitter allows you to track what users are talking about, in your sector. By searching Twitter for keywords or phrases you immediately tap into the conversations of millions. Why is this important? Because it allows you to tailor your offering to the masses and individuals alike. Nothing else on earth gives you this kind of consumer connection power.
3. Promotional offers – Twitter users love offers. Ask Dell. They have harvested success from the use of Twitter by posting offers via a single Twitter account. Other companies can do the same. Keep your offers simple and of value and you will quickly build up a following of people who realise you’re a vendor of more than simply retail priced products or services. It is no different advertising in the press, on commercial radio or on TV – except your potential catchment area is vast. Big beyond belief. Nothing else will give you the consumer penetration per second that a post on Twitter can – free.
4. News – people love news. By posting changes in your company, products, services or opinions you will find that your news rapidly gets propagated far beyond any traditional media reach. You’ll build traffic to your website or other forms of company media, but we’re not talking about the over-mentioned back-links here. Forget back-links. Cynics will point to the nil value of them from Twitter because of the way it works, but ultimately you should be focused on the single fact that you get someone to your website. They might bookmark it. They might send it to a friend. They might explore it. All of these are possibilities, but one thing that is an absolute certainly is that yet again you have harnessed a complete free transport of communication.
5. Competitors – they may well be posting on Twitter too. If they’re not, good for you – because you’ll gain the upper hand. However, if they are, its not a bad thing purely because you have an immediate way of tracking what they’re up to. You can respond to them commercially. Immediately. It is real-time competition in the making. For those thinking that you might get blocked by them and be unable to get their updates – think a little more carefully and set up a different account purely for tracking your competitors. It’s not rocket science.
6. Advertising – not promotions, but standard advertising. Do it carefully, considerately, don’t bore people and you immediately get the benefit of a world of users who want to see what you have to say (if they follow you). No newspaper, TV channel or radio station can offer you the same. Nor can they offer it for no charge. Furthermore, people will follow you and in doing so your captive audience got wider and more attentive if you treat them properly.
7. Education – you’ll find people and companies you’ll want to follow, not just your competitors. You’ll be engaging with people who you find post links and information that you find of value. It’ll educate, widen your horizons and challenge your stance on subjects – and none of that can ever be a bad thing. Without even knowing it, those that use Twitter for promotional purposes of any kind will automatically find others offering things of value to them – and often it is content you’ll never pay a penny or dime for.
8. Image and Subliminal Messages – by merely having a presence on Twitter you have communicated to the world that you’re a follower of technology and trends. Find a problem with that. Go on, try to find one. Any negative conetation you can conjour up could only come through the misuse of your Twitter account or taking your audience for granted. Everything else about the image you convey is a positive one.
9. Subliminal Messages - you’ll be amazed how many people will remember you and your brand purely because of the content of your avatar (the logo beside your user name). Subliminal marketing is incredibly strong. You don’t even need to get a user to read your posts for them to subconsciously register it in their brain and recover it when they least expect it.
10. Cost – yes we’ve raised it before this point, but it is vital that any cynic take note of it. You can point to drawbacks and possible hazards, but you can never escape the fact that by joining Twitter you immediately empower yourself with a complete free tool. For marketing, branding, advertising, news, customer feedback or competitive advantage – you will find absolutely nothing to rival it offline.
So, the next time you read an article questioning the worth of Twitter, think about this – worth on Twitter is really about what you’ve spent. If you didn’t join you’d have lost nothing and gained nothing. If you did join, what have you to lose?
If you’re one of the cynics, think of a few facts behind Twitter.
Firstly, you can question it forever, but you will never get away from the fact it generates huge publicity. There is very little bad publicity in this world – what publicity a company does get usually has a silver lining if you follow the trail for long enough.
If you doubt the monetary value of Twitter to companies, you’re speaking to the wrong people. Monetary growth comes in many direct and indirect forms, and as such it can often be difficult to track it back to the source.
Let’s say you start using Twitter. You post content that a person 200 miles away finds of interest, but they’re not in your region and the likelihood of them doing business with you is limited. They retweet it though, because the offer was good. Users more local to the company pick up on it. They’re not interested either, because as it happened they’ve just bought product X or service Y. They’ll remember you though. So, the next week, when they meet someone and it happens to drop into conversation that the person is looking for product X or service Y – what do you think is a possibility?
The above is a classic example of brand awareness that transcends the medium originally used to communicate it. If you think our example is optimistic then we’d disagree, because the channels and branches that a message travels down will actually usually be much more varied! If anything, the above example is typical!
Cynics will point to little traceable proof of value directly attributed to Twitter posts. Ask them why companies spend billions on brand awareness every year, little of which can be directly attributable to a specific media. They’ll go very quiet.
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