The Power of Twitter

Let’s face it; the point of Twitter is lost on a lot of people. Who the hell cares that Joe “just ordered a diet coke and is waiting for his Fat Burger cheeseburger”. I agree, there’s lots of useless crap on Twitter, but there are exceptions to every rule. A recent study broke down and categorized 2,000 tweets from the US in English, and here are their findings (Source Wikipedia):

• Pointless babble — 40%

• Conversational — 38%

• Pass-along value — 9%

• Self-promotion — 6%

• Spam — 4%

• News — 4%

Many businesses have started to understand the power of Twitter as a marketing tool – how so, you ask? Well have a look at this simple example.

As of October 2010, Lady Gaga is the most followed Twitterer with over 6.7 million followers. One tweet from her account reaches 6.7 million people immediately, and of those, thousands will re-tweet this message to their followers, and in a matter of minutes, this message will basically end up viewed 100+ million Twitter accounts.

Sure it takes time to create fans, but even a much smaller Twitter account with only 1000 fans has a far reach. Small businesses can really benefit, they can follow their competition, start conversations to generate new ideas for products and services and get their name out there by talking and helping current and future customers.

If you’re still unconvinced about the potential of Twitter, simply go to search.twitter.com, and type in your company name in the search. Are your customers talking about you? Next, type in keywords for your business, are people asking questions that your company could solve or fix?

Still don’t see the potential of Twitter? Wow, you really are stubborn…