Those of you who know me know that I am pretty much of a Twitter fanatic. Our business is in the thick of the social media marketing world and it is a no-brainer for me to be fully wrapped up in the Twitter universe.
But a recurring question we get from our small business ecommerce customers these days is whether it makes sense for them to invest the time and effort in being engaged in online social communities such as Twitter.
I am going to put aside the direct ROI benefits that a small ecommerce business can realize from Social Media – which is a whole discussion unto itself - and look at some of the other benefits, or, as I like to think of them, opportunities.
These are some of the opportunities that Twitter presents for you:
Take your conversations public. If you have expertise in your field, Twitter can give you a platform to share it. It takes a bit of a mind shift to move private conversations that you previously might have had with an individual customer into a public space, but when thousands of people can see you demonstrate your expertise, the payoff can be huge.
Interact and engage new people. Twitter now has tens of millions of users. Dang, that is a lot of people. A healthy percentage of those users are on Twitter specifically because they want to interact and connect with like-minded people. You would be amazed at the connections you can make: potential customers, suppliers, or employees. There is a universe of people tweeting away. It would make sense to take a look and see if your target audience is using social media tools.
Interact with your users. Putting aside the untold masses for a moment, your current customer base could very well be on Twitter. And one thing can be said about Twitter (and Facebook) users. They tend to be die-hards. By jumping on Twitter yourself, you can meet with your customers, on their terms, and build a strong bond with them.
Listen and monitor. Twitter has a powerful real-time search functionality built into it. Getting a read on what people might be saying about you or what is happening in your industry couldn’t be easier. Of course, if you don’t have the popularity/notoriety of a Paris Hilton, there is not going to be much chatter about you. But Twitter Search is a boon to those wanting to tap into the public discussion on a large scale. You can actively seek others who are searching for the information and products that you possess and reach out to them. And, if by chance, someone is conveying a positive (or negative) experience they had with your company, you can respond to it.
Use as a tool to learn. Any new, cutting edge information is going to show up right away on Twitter. Whether you are talking about World news events, technology rollouts, ecommerce tools, or virtually any other kind of information on a local, regional, or national level, you will hear about it on Twitter. Although the potential exists to fritter away a lot of time on Twitter, the opportunity also exists to efficiently monitor the flow of information that is critical to your business.
My advice to any small ecommerce owner is to, at the very least, try Twitter, in earnest for a month. (I will define “earnest” by saying that you will follow 50 people and do at least the same number of posts.) It is free and easy and takes very little effort to get going. Twitter is not for everyone and is not necessarily going to help every small business owner out there make more profit. But once you get the hang of it, you might find it to be a powerful avenue of communication that will help you build relationships with current and potential customers and generate business.
More on getting started with Twitter in a later post.
