Could Twitter be a White Elephant for Businesses?

There’s a lot of noise in the marketplace about Twitter. Could this be used by businesses to extend their online reach?

For those not in the know, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. In its simplest form it allows users to tell the world, in no less than 140 characters, what they’re up to (tweets), similar to the status update on Facebook. You can however append things such as images, or links to other sites, to support whatever it is you’re ranting about at that moment in time.

Twitter’s greatest coup must be in the uptake of its service by the most powerful man in the world, Jeff Capes; no sorry, Barack Obama. Not only did Barack join Twitter, his tweeting was second to none, almost aviary-like. That was pre-election though and, understandably, it’s slowed a little since then (almost stopped!), but, rather successfully, he engaged the online community to help achieve his goal of winning the US presidential election – so it can be used successfully.

The 2nd most followed man on Twitter? Stephen Fry. Very similar to Barack, they’re both male. However, as a self-confessed geek with about 6 iPhones to his name, understandably, he’s part of this burgeoning phenomenon, gaining massive profile from his prolific tweeting when stuck in a lift last week.

Other famous uses of Twitter include a recently held 1 minute Twitter silence in Australia for the victims of the bush fire, photos of the Hudson River plane crash were made public just 1 minute after the event, and Erykah Badu recently tweeted all the way through child birth apparently, but how could you & I use it? How could we use it for our business?

Unless there’s a genuine reason for people to follow you, your Twitter account could end up the same as the graveyard of corporate Facebook pages.

You must add-value to what they, your target audience, can already achieve on the web, you must give them something above & beyond what they can get from other channels, from your own site even, you must generate some real interest in your tweeting for this to become a primary outlet for talking with your customers.

You may need to create offers unique to this audience, give them access to content unavailable elsewhere, allow them to be the first to know important news, dates, events or sales and just then you may start to gain some traction from this fast-growing channel.

Finally, once there’s genuine attraction in following you, you can seed its growth through your existing marketing campaigns and Twitter could fast become a really important part of the communication mix for your company.

It’s really important to create that genuine attraction though. Without it, your efforts could be better spent elsewhere and this could soon become the white elephant you didn’t want. If used correctly however, and you generate your own aviary of followers, this could quickly become a new best friend.