Out of sheer morbid interest I have signed up to Twitter and several people who had recommended it are now following me and I them while a rather pretty girl in a furry bikini has also decided to follow me as she does, it seems, most others too.
And that's it really.
I just don't seem to get it. No lesser person than Thomas Power (Chairman of www.ecademy.com) had put me on to it but I don't really understand why someone would want to know I had a bacon sandwich for breakfast, watched Wasps v Leicester (farewell Lawrence Dallaglio - what a way to bow out) and am about to take the dogs for a walk? Or why that would help me in business?
Am I missing a trick? Your views would be appreciated.
www.calxeurope.com
Sunday 1 June 2008
Twitter - Business Tool or fad?
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11 comments:
I recently joined ecademy after being recommended by someone I hardly knew.
Immediately after signing up I was contacted by several people who wanted to network with we. Unclear for which reasons. I soon found out that the exact same people seemed to network with all newcomers on ecademy.
A week after joining I had a genuine business need (something that I was prepared to pay for) and sent a message to one of my new network friends, who seemed to be in the business area of my need. I never got a response.
Most social networks seems to based on the owners wish to make fast money without doing too much. The recipy follows the same steps. Open portal with a promise of business or personal value. Create a cascading recruitment mechanism where current members are recuiting new memebers to build a large crowd. Sell advertismenemt or sell the whole thing to someone.
These portals are not really concerned with the promise they made to their clients, there are not really concerned with providing real value for their customers, they are only concerned with making money. And that is why they fail. There is nothing wrong with making money, but unless you have an attractive value proposition and a strong ambition to really serve the needs of your clients, you will never be able to make a long term relationship with the market.
I am using LinkedIn and that works well for me. The other platforms I have tested have been very disappointing and some even seems to be build with no feeling for proper business ethics.
It's definitely not a fad... people do use it as a business tool, the question is if you can leverage what it has to give. I've listed down a few business uses of Twitter based on my research
* Drawing attention to/promoting products/content. Sending out special offers
* Viral marketing, and for pre-release product announcements
* News websites deliver information and updates using it
* Spreading the word about stuff we’re working on (announcements, etc)
* Gathering feedback from the community (asking questions)
* Customer service (subscribing to mentions of our company, responding to people personally)
* Getting pitched and communicating with PR agencies
* For project updates - send a quick one-liner and you can see all in one place / timeline
* Ask the expert - fling your question from wherever you are -up to the twitter network / global water cooler and get an answer.
* reach out by cross-posting information from regular blog
* Business bloggers are finding that tools like Twitter help draw traffic to their blog posts and give them a way to stay connected without the commitment of writing lengthy blog posts.
More on my blog post
http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/why-we-tweet-what-value-does-twitter-bring-on-personal-and-business-front/
here is an article from Business week :
"People learn what colleagues are up to, inside and outside the company. They see trends. They make contacts. They learn. Some even sell. A Dell (DELL) employee who goes by the Twitter name of Ggroovin tells us that Dell's service on Twitter has brought in half a million dollars of new orders in the past year. Some on Twitter sniff around for the next job."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_22/b4086044617865_page_2.htm
Twitter is like any other Social Network, you get what you give. The idea behind it does make it a powerful platform to learn, share and network. The only thing bringing Twitter down right now is its stability, but once those issues are sorted out you'll see its users continue to grow in numbers. It is currently the 5th most used website among early adopters (right under facebook, youtube, google and wikipedia. So as you can see its already one of the big boys.
I was on the fence for a while until I recently learned that Twitter has the potential to be a marketing tool when used in as such.
Using your phone or instant messenger issue the command "track xyz" where xyz is a keyword related to what you are marketing. When notified about tweets with related keywords, try starting a conversation.
After all, it is all about the conversation, is it not?
I didn't really get it at first either. Then I had the 'aha' moment that others have referred to.
You just need to think back to how text messaging all started - it was always dismissed as something people wouldn't use and it turned out to be one of the biggest surprises in telecoms - and one of the biggest money spinners!
There's so many uses for it - many of which have been mentioned in answers to this question.
Some others to consider are targetted communications to interest groups - this could be internally within your organisation, with customers or anything else for that matter. I'm currently trialling twitter as an internal communications viral tool. The beauty of it is you're limited to only 140 characters which means you need to keep your updates succinct (unlike this answer!). People then have the choice to subscribe to various 'group' updates as well as their mates, various news feeds etc.
I've also got it on my blackberry which is an amazingly quick mini app that allows me to check out what my colleagues are up to (work and pleasure - nice as that brings out the human side), what Mars Phoenix is doing, the latest sports news, industry updates and various feeds from some interesting forums out there.
So, my conclusion is that it's probably wise not to dismiss it. But rather keep an eye on it and even have a dabble. You never know what you'll find out! Happy for you to follow me as http://twitter.com/abisignorelli. But, be warned, my most recent twitter is about trying to find the mouse my cat delivered to me during the night!
Happy twittering!
I didn't really get it at first either. Then I had the 'aha' moment that others have referred to.
You just need to think back to how text messaging all started - it was always dismissed as something people wouldn't use and it turned out to be one of the biggest surprises in telecoms - and one of the biggest money spinners!
There's so many uses for it - many of which have been mentioned in answers to this question.
Some others to consider are targetted communications to interest groups - this could be internally within your organisation, with customers or anything else for that matter. I'm currently trialling twitter as an internal communications viral tool. The beauty of it is you're limited to only 140 characters which means you need to keep your updates succinct (unlike this answer!). People then have the choice to subscribe to various 'group' updates as well as their mates, various news feeds etc.
I've also got it on my blackberry which is an amazingly quick mini app that allows me to check out what my colleagues are up to (work and pleasure - nice as that brings out the human side), what Mars Phoenix is doing, the latest sports news, industry updates and various feeds from some interesting forums out there.
So, my conclusion is that it's probably wise not to dismiss it. But rather keep an eye on it and even have a dabble. You never know what you'll find out! Happy for you to follow me as http://twitter.com/abisignorelli. But, be warned, my most recent twitter is about trying to find the mouse my cat delivered to me during the night!
Happy twittering!
The thing about Twitter is that it is what you make of it. It's like a cocktail party-- you can sit on the sidelines and just drink a beer or you can get into the mix and meet people you don't know and possibly make a contact or two or find out something you didn't know.
It's also much like the old time telephone party lines where you can grab a bit of interesting 411 and then move on.
checking out other interesting people who are on Twitter, (Chow, Scoble, Mayo) can lead you in different directions and make you *think* or have you be on curve with what's going on-- because they use it for the quick hit blog. Does it substitute for a full blog? No-- but it can be used to lead you to a blog that just might provide food for thought.
It took me months before I had the "ah-hah" moment of Twitter-- I like it. I just need to make sure that I turn it on and read what others are doing.
I too wondered about this for the longest time. I finally found a use for Twitter, probably outside the standard use case. I've discussed it a bit on my blog.
It might sound reassuring to attribute everything to a Black Swan...no, it wasn't.
It was just greed and hubris...a concurrence of circumstances in which men behaviour choose deliberately to ignore simple common sense.
Few years ago, I listened to a brilliant presentation of an Investment bank of this marvellous new wonder...but never lost focus on the contradiction that bunchin together a number of risky loans, and betting that they will not default all together, but in the end get all repaid...didn't work.
And the bright young lions were never able to explain how they transformed it in a AAA security...and their accomplice from the rating agency was there and did not explain it.
But the greed for yield was there..and blinding enough not to flash the impossibility of a AAA security yielding way above risk free...and the commissions for packaging this nonsense were so high that money and revenue greed led to have the few voices against it marginalized...
It was stupid shortsighted greed what led a Central bank to support the criminal idea to use "home equity" to finance conspicous consumption.
No Black Swans....simple human stupidity and greed.
The writing has been on the wall from the beginning, complex mathematical explanations (that i could supply...if you like to get bored) just hide simple greed.
Nigel also asked this question on LinkedIn, and asked me to re-post my response here.
Cheers,
Michelle
At first, Twitter is a bit like talking to yourself. Like any social network, you only get out of it what you put into it. I keep a personal Twitter account, where I do tweet frivolous things, as do my friends. However, through that account I've discovered a thriving and wonderful social media network of real people, all who live my area. Twitter has allowed me to broaden my connections that way, leading, of course, to face to face networking.
In addition, I have a professional Twitter account. With that account, I follow thought leaders in my field. One of the great things about Twitter is that it flattens the org chart. I'm following people who have written books I recommend and who I might never have had a chance to meet. Many of them are following me back. Through Twitter, I have conversations with these folks and share ideas. All are equal on Twitter. In fact, I found a freelance writing job for one of those very same thought leaders just by chatting with him via Twitter.
If you just follow a few people, don't expect to get much out of it. If you want personal enrichment, hunt down friends or people in your town to start following. Then introduce yourself. If you want professional enrichment, hunt down thought leaders in your field and start conversations with them.
There are a number of ways to use Twitter effectively in marketing, although I do recommend subtlety. It is also a great way to get feedback and spark conversation about a product.
Before I wrap up, I want to note that there are some important tricks to Twitter. A lot of folks won't follow someone who doesn't give their name. My Twitter account is writetechnology, but if you mouse over my icon, it tells you my full name. This just means you're a real person and not a company.
I've included links from my own blog about using Twitter in training & education, but those advantages may be applied generally as well. I've also included a link to Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juice Twitter Guide series of blog posts.
http://www.twitter.com/writetechnology
Links:
http://www.writetech.net/2008/04/microblogging-i.html
http://www.writetech.net/2008/04/microblogging-1.html
http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/
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