June 19, 2009

MARSHFIELD, WI – If you’ve heard of Twitter, but haven’t seen a need for your business to take it very seriously, allow me to urge you to give it a second, more careful, look.

But before you dive in blindly, allow me to introduce you to a global technology phenomenon that individuals and small businesses, probably just like yours, are already embracing in surprising numbers.

The reason?

They recognize that marketing and communications, like everything else in business these days, has evolved. Dramatically.

And micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are central to that evolution.

So meet Twitter, not a person, but a free social and professional networking platform that allows individuals and companies (“Tweeters”) to send 140-character messages, (“Tweets”) to anyone who cares to receive them (“Followers”) multiple times a day.

There is good reason why that probably sounds like the most clever waste of valuable time that one could possibly conceive. The reason is that it can be a complete waste of time.

But only if you fail to realize that the twitter.com website itself makes a terrible first impression and is not terribly useful on its own.

However, used with the right third-party applications, like TweetDeck.com (which is free), your Twitter account can be one of the best marketing investments you can make.

But don’t just take my word for it. Leading analysts are beginning to take note.

None other than The Nielsen Company’s Michelle McGiboney recently opined, Twitter “…offers a variety of ways for marketers to reach their customers, and it’s a tool that businesses will have to learn how to utilize to their best advantage.”

Ms. McGiboney is right on target. Sadly, though, some small businesses have already written off Twitter as a transient fad unworthy of their time, thus never learning how to use it to their company’s advantage.

But its rising popularity among all age groups is, I believe, likely to entice skeptics to at least give it a try. Many are already doing exactly that.

Data recently released by internet analytics firm Compete.com, claims unique visitors to Twitter increased a whopping 1043%, year-over-year, from 1,725,977 users in May of 2008 to 19,728,619 in May of 2009.”

That’s a bit of a spike to say the least, and a spike whose source may surprise you. While it is true that the 18-25 year old segment has signed on in large numbers, according to Compete, their usage intensity pales in comparison to Twitters’ most loyal age group of – are you ready? – 35-49 year-olds who, incidentally, also comprised roughly 40% of the site’s audience as of February of this year.

Although not every age group has embraced Twitter with equal enthusiasm, Twitter’s broad penetration within the US has been impressive, with many staking their place on the global stage for conversation that Twitter provides. From President Obama in the White House (whose Twitter username is @barackobama) to Christa’s Bistro & Deli (@christasat126), closer to your house, chances are someone you may least expect is already tweeting away on Twitter.

The prospect of a large and diverse US audience is ideal for big business and government, but for small businesses on Main Street looking to find customers, usually the right audience is every bit as important as a large one. Being a small business itself of only about fifty employees, I suspect Twitter is keenly aware of this. So are savvy small business owners who have already found clever ways to nail the hyper-local dimension of the network.

One well-known example is CoffeeGroundz Café (@coffeegroundz) a small coffee House in Houston Their website, coffeegroundz.net, is worth checking out. They claim to be one of the first companies to have taken a to-go order using Twitter. Now clients not only place orders for pick-up, some customers at the café actually place orders from the comfort of their seat in the café. CoffeeGroundz’s Operations Manager J.R. Cohen, has also successfully hosted charity Tweetups (social gatherings promoted via Twitter) to raise money for worthy causes.

Another case study comes by way of Namecheap (@namecheap), an internet company that claims to rely heavily on word of mouth marketing, a strategy similar, at least in that respect, to many businesses on Main Street. Namecheap marketing specialist, Michelle Greer, has used trivia contests every hour on the hour (she used the free app from TweetLater.com to schedule the tweets) with the first replies winning a one-year domain registration. As a result of a dramatic increase in Twitter followers, Namecheap’s traffic increased by 30% when they ran a promotion in earlier this year. Growing and engaging a solid Twitter following has become so central to their sales growth that they were willing to shell out more than $15,000 worth of prizes during their most recent trivia contest, which ended yesterday.

There are countless other examples like these where small businesses needing to find new ways connect with their customers in an ailing economy discovered Twitter was just what the doctor ordered.

To be sure, Twitter is not a panacea to cure all that ails Main Street, but for the price it is definitely worth giving a fair shot.

Before you do, though, recall what I alluded to above and what Time magazine writer Steven Johnson wryly observes as well: Twitter “makes a terrible first impression…[but] it turns out to have unsuspected depth.”

Copyright © 2009 VMR Communications, LLC