Twitter: lessons from one year of business use

My Twitter account had its first anniversary at the weekend, so time for some reflections on what I’ve learned about its value and application for business and marketing purposes.

The bottom line

My original goals focused on providing value and service to those who might find me on Twitter.

Feeling all warm and cuddly about helping folk is rewarding, but does Twitter participation impact business goals? I run a content website, so does Twitter drive traffic to the site?

Twitter’s effect on visitor numbers is hard to measure. For example:

• Over the past year, Twitter.com accounted for 0.88% of total visits.
• But most people don’t use the actual Twitter.com website when using Twitter so the above number underestimates the real traffic implications: Twitter accounts for at least some of the 66,450 visits to the site that had no referrer data.
• Some of that Twitter traffic would have occurred without my active presence on the network.

In summary: I would estimate Twitter participation accounted for some 3-4% additional visits to Email Marketing Reports.

Of course, it’s no good focusing on results without understanding how much it cost to get those results. Nearly all discussions of social media (and email) focus on the former, not the latter.

Social media is different, but the decision to participate still demands the same diligence you’d give any other marketing decision. What does it cost and what do we get back? Not a question that’s always easy to answer, but you should try.

More on those costs later.

Um…you didn’t mention the number of followers?

Just like email list size, the number of followers is a seductive metric to focus on. It’s easy to find and it tends to go up regularly. Perfect!

But as with list size, the number of followers is not an end goal: it’s a means to an end, not the end itself.

What about indirect benefits?

As a social medium, Twitter is about communication and all the benefits associated with that. Communication, done appropriately, strengthens relationships…which strengthen business success.

And there are many other indirect benefits of participation. For me, for example:

• Business tweets are a constant source of useful information and links to interesting resources.
• If you contribute positively, you build goodwill for you and your organization.
• Some people prefer to contact you via Twitter (though I would argue that if they couldn’t do so, they’d just use another channel).
• It’s an excellent testing ground for writing headlines, subject lines and concise copy. I’ve learned much from observing how people pitch my articles to their followers.
• It provides insight into what your audience is looking for. What content gets retweeted the most? What links get the most clicks? There is a lot of market intelligence and audience/customer feedback to glean from the conversations. Someone once pointed out that inane tweets about breakfast are quite interesting if you’re a cereal manufacturer.
• It provides insight into the broader demographics, interests and identities of your audience.

These other benefits alone may be justification to participate in Twitter. But participation also has its downsides…

The time suck

This is the big one. Even if you are very picky about who you follow, the flow of tweets still has a very low signal to noise ratio.

Of course, one person’s noise is another’s signal. This is where you have to be very clear about exactly why you use Twitter and where your priorities lie.

Many “experts” will suggest a single approach based on a particular business objective. But just as with email marketing, we all have unique situations, audiences, goals and resources.

Everyone needs to find the individual approach that works best for them.

For some, participating in a never-ending cascade of conversations is the raison d’être for being on Twitter. It’s fulfillment in itself.

Most business users need to be more circumspect and set policies for active (tweeting) and passive (reading) participation.

I regularly check Twitter for mentions of my account name, so I can comment or react as required. But I do not read every tweet from those I follow, as the benefits do not justify the time commitment.

Nor do I expect the reverse. Your followers are certainly not reading every tweet you put out.

On the active side, I limit my own tweets to article recommendations and responses to tweets directed at me personally. I rarely participate in off-topic conversations.

At this point, all the social media gurus throw their hands up in despair. The conversations are the point! They’re the core of social media success.

If you’re not participating in conversations, you’re not getting it. How can your personality or brand shine? How can you build the relationships that sit at the core of online business success?

This is where we come back to cost: no personal interaction is ever meaningless and there is great value in such interactions.

But they can become meaningless when set against the time required for participation and the other things you could do with that time.

Social media participation has a cost.

As with any resource allocation decision, you have to decide if the rewards justify that cost. A decision we all take for ourselves and our situation.

This isn’t just about a cost-benefit analysis either. It’s also about character.

Social media is perfect for social animals like the great DJ Waldow, a born connector. A man whose optimism and outgoing nature brings people together and leaves you feeling better for the encounter.

Others are less comfortable with that medium. (The telegraph is a good fit for me.) We can all adapt to some extent, but we’re not all cut out to be top conversationalists.

Know your limitations. And make sure the people you employ to drive your social media marketing have (duh!) the right personality fit for the job you want them to do.

The self-promotion trap

Tweets are no different to emails in that you need to deliver value. Constant self-promotion at the expense of value simply teaches people to ignore you.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive of course.

In my case, people want to know when my latest blog post is available, so I tell them. But I also tell them about other people’s work I think deserves a wider audience.

Like email marketing, if you retain the interests of the reader at heart, then you will automatically deliver value. And you will get value in return: attention, word of mouth, viral effects, clickthroughs etc.

“Always on” expectations

Twitter use adds to the “always on” pressure associated with 24/7 online marketing and business.

While you can limit your input to ensure the cost-benefit balance falls in your favor, you have to have a set minimum commitment. Not least to ensure any tweets directed to you are answered promptly.

If you can’t meet a minimum commitment, then don’t commit at all.

Diminishing self-worth

Twitter is and isn’t the real world. It’s the real world, but filtered so that people present the image of themselves they’d like to present.

Depending on who you follow, you can reach the conclusion that other people on Twitter are far more interesting than you are. Based on the profile pictures people use, I’m also in the bottom 5% of global physical attractiveness.

Just remember, few people tweet about things they think will make them look bad.

And you can do wonders with Photoshop.

Apply email discipline to tweeting

I’ve written before on the comparison between email and Twitter. But a lot of the discipline and expertise applied to the former is equally applicable to the latter.

Think of the testing and thought that often goes into identifying the best time of day to send out an email. Twitter is no different. In fact, timing is even more important in Twitter.

It takes hours or days for an email to get buried in a typical inbox. It takes minutes for a tweet to suffer the same fate.

If I tweet about an article in the early morning my time (CET) it bombs. The same tweet put out 8-10 hours later will get 3-4 times the clicks. When is your audience paying attention to their Twitter stream?

A “promotional” tweet shares much in common with an email or a PPC search ad. Much of what we’ve already learned about copywriting and similar can be adapted to Twitter. Again, Twitter is new, but people are still people.

My breakfast

After one year and 959 tweets, I thought it finally appropriate to mention the contents of my breakfast. Allegedly this is all most people use Twitter for. So here goes:

• Organic cornflakes
• Organic muesli
• Organic banana
• Organic skimmed milk
• Orange juice

Before you jump to conclusions, nothing else I eat is even remotely as healthy as my breakfast. The contents of my lunch will be revealed in one year’s time.

Your thoughts?

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