Updated: June 30, 2009
We’ve all heard the rage these days about Twitter and how it’s the must have online marketing tool. But how can Twitter contribute to an overall online marketing strategy that yields results?
Marketing Experiments has a concise study on just that – teaming up with other marketing professionals to review research studies, evaluate companies who harness Twitter successfully and explore different ways small businesses should be using Twitter.
Of all the research the team reviewed, one fact stands out…Twitter and other social networking utilities cater primarily to the early-adopter audience, or tech-savvy people who are the first, and most prolific users.
Many people who claim to be proficient in social media have no experience in actual social media marketing, which is a completely different rubrics cube to solve. Research from Nielsen Online showed 60% of Twitter users in the U.S. do not return the month after sign-up.
But research also shows Twitter is valuable at live events…social media service Pathable analyzed nearly 800 “tweets” from a Wordcamp conference and found that 1/3 of them were useful to attendees.
At a minimum, monitor Twitter to see what others are saying about your brand…nearly 2/3 of marketers do not monitor social media or response to negative critique according to MarketingSherpa. This represents a missed opportunity to learn what customers are saying and manage customer issues.
Use it in the right ways, and Twitter can become a valuable online marketing tool. Use it to impact your bottom line in one of three ways: increase revenue, build brand or equity, decrease costs.
If you can’t see how Twitter helps your organization accomplish at least one of those three goals, now may not be the time.
But even if this is the case and you don’t plan on immediately building a social networking presence, create an account for your brand or business on Twitter and other major social networking utilites so that option stays open to you in the future.
See the presentation or simply review the synopsis at Marketing Experiments and learn more about how you can use Twitter to impact your bottom line along with examples of real world success.