Some thoughts on Twitter
February 5, 2010 1:07 am
The Economist have a special report on social networking this week. They have, as you might expect, an article on Twitter and how it has grown and grown of late, with, for example, 58 million web visitors in October of last year alone. Unfortunately we do not know what % of these were business related. However I expect that the vast majority were personal rather than business related, and while they tell us about Thitter as a whole they leave us no wiser when it comes to the business usage of Twitter.
But they have some other interesting figures as well. For example, they say that
- one in five who sign up never tweet (20%)
- half of those who do, tweet only once in 74 days (50%)
- the 10% most active members contribute 90% of tweets
My take on all of that is that
A minority on Twitter can only be described as maniacs………………………………….……..(10%)
A very substantial majority are in effect non-users………………………………………………….(70%)
That leaves the remainder who might be described as normal users of the system………(20%)
And my overall conclusions are that Twitter is for a minority of people and that while most so-called experts just recommend that you should just get in there and start tweeting, it might be better to stop and think: what am I going to do here and how am I going to do it?
In other words remember that this is a tool and if you want to use it for business purposes it might just be better to have some sort of coherent strategy in place first! That may not be so important for personal users, but for business users it is essential.
Tags: Business, Marketing, Networking, Twitter
Blogging, Business, Marketing, Productivity, Small business tips, Social Networking, Trends, Twitter | ffullard | 1:07 am
I find this shocking. I’ve recently started to investigate the benefits of twitter use for business and these figures aren’t encouraging.
Another nice example of the Pareto principle
Roisin
The figures tell us about the wider situation. However, that does not mean that it will not work for you and your business. The key is to take a strategic approach to using Twitter and to measure it’s effectiveness for you. In particular I would look at the return from it in terms of the time invested and ask: if I invested the same time and effort in some other form of marketing would I get a better return?
I see Twitter as a tool. There are others and some may be better than others depending on circumstances and the skill developed in using them.
I’m still confused by the common assertion that only 10% of tweets should sell … and that 90% should be about “taking part in customer dialogue”. Fine if you’re using Twitter to communicate you’re an authority on something – as a life coach, journalist, blogger – but a retailer’s customers aren’t interested in our views on world peace … they’re interested in news about collections, our styles, our discount offers … how do you balance the two?