If you’re like most serious business people, you believe the latest social networking tool Twitter is nothing more than a passing fad. Conventional wisdom holds that Twitter targets ego-centric individuals thinking the multitudes are following their every update and that serious businesses have nothing to gain by engaging in such trivialities. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Evaluating a new technology mid-stream is a sticky process. Twitter’s early reputation as the latest fad for the self-focused Facebook generation was more or less earned. But, increasingly, Twitter is evolving from banal social network to egalitarian broadcast tool. Business owners who choose not to evolve with Twitter are leaving priceless top-of-mind awareness untapped.
Twitter levels the playing field. Traditionally, the big players were capitalized for big ad buys and expensive marketing campaigns. Twitter allows businesses of all sizes to engage existing and potential clients in three profitable activities:
1. Adding value
Most business owners understand the merit of giving value to prospects and clients unconditionally. If you position your company as an expert in your field, when your services are needed, you’ll be the first one they call. Being the resource of first-response gives you a significant competitive edge if you have something of value to say when called upon.
Twitter allows you to broadcast value messages to all your followers, for free, communicating, “We are a reliable, valuable resource in our area of expertise.” Practically, this means linking to relevant articles, sharing brief anecdotes, and commenting on current events relevant to your industry. If a prospect knows you give value for free, they’ll gladly pay when they need what you sell.
2. Communicating important information
More than traditional mail, or even e-mail, people are using Twitter to aggregate information important to them. Your organization can leverage this trend by using Twitter to broadcast important information. In addition to traditional methods (website, e-newsletters, press releases), Twitter is a low-cost way to announce new products, new versions or releases, available job opportunities, even management changes.
3. Connecting mutual friends in profitable relationships
Think of Twitter as a cocktail party where every one of your potential clients is in the same room as all of your existing clients, business partners, vendors, and advisors. If you facilitated that event, would the attendees be grateful? One of your vendors needs a CPA and happens to meet your accountant who saved you thousands last year. A prospect gets a chance to chat with an existing client and hear about your exceptional customer service team. One of your vendors meets several potential clients and lands some more business – all because you connected them.
Twitter works just that way as people click around to see who you are following and who follows you. They see whose messages you have re-tweeted (re-broadcast) and start following those folks as well – all because you effectively introduced them. In business, what goes around comes around – there is very little downside, and tremendous upside potential, to facilitating these connections.
Of course, the most important thing is having an audience. To paraphrase a classic question, “If a tweet happens in the woods and there is no follower to hear it, does it make a sound?” Next week we’ll look at getting and keeping followers.
No comments:
Post a Comment