When I announced TheSocialWeb last week, I said that I'd be challenging the status quo and asking the question 'why' a lot. And I'm starting off with a something that's been on my mind for several weeks now: from a marketing perspective, why do we bother with Twitter?
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There appear to be three distinct motivations for having a Twitter profile: 1) purely out of enjoyment, 2) to network, and 3) to sell something or service a business or organisation. Everything else more or less breaks down into these three categories. If you're on it for fun, that's fair enough - each to their own. But if you use Twitter to network, as a marketing tool or as a customer service vehicle, let me ask you this: what return do you get from Twitter? I mean, in terms of real, solid, presentable ROI?
There are some individuals and brands out there who have undoubtedly got Twitter cracked and for whom it provides immense value. But for every Dell, Starbucks, Innocent, Brian Solis or Stephen Fry, there are ten, fifty or even a hundred more who get no significant return and who are wasting an absolutely massive combined volume of money and resource. And I believe that the issue boils down to one simple thing: numbers.
For any sort of return on Twitter, you have to put the time in. Unlike Facebook (arguably), it's labour-intensive. And such is the transient nature of a tweet (and therefore Twitter itself) that the returns on anything less than full attention are minimal. I estimate from a (purely unscientific) study that the reach of a single tweet could be as low as 2%. You've therefore got to tweet and have a dialogue with a hell of a lot of people to make the much-hyped 'conversation' worthwhile.
If you use Twitter personally to network, as I do, what value that does that provide in the real world? How does that convert into cold hard cash for you or your employer? If the answer in all seriousness is 'it doesn't' then wouldn't you be better spending your time doing something else? Be honest. My guess is that the answer is probably 'yes'. And yet you (and I) will persist.
If you're a business, how do you measure your efforts on Twitter? How do you know whether the time you spend there (or pay someone else to spend there on your behalf) actually makes a difference to your bottom line? Are those 700 followers actually of any great value to you? Twitter is not a cheap marketing option, far from it in fact. Would your money be better spent elsewhere, where you can clearly measure ROI; Google Adwords, for instance?
What it comes down to, whether you're a business or even an individual, is strategy. If you don't have a strategic reason to be on Twitter that is devised from your wider business or personal goals, then you really might want to spend some time getting one; quick. Let me be very clear that I'm not saying that Twitter is a total waste of time. I use it. I recommend to some of my clients that they use it. But not all. And what I do know very clearly are the reasons why I and they have Twitter profiles. All I'm asking you to do is to take a break from Twitter for a few days, step back and give some serious thought to the question of why. You might be surprised what turns up when you do.
Over 100 million people, brands and organisations have registered profiles on the world's leading micro-blogging platform. And 100 million people can't be wrong. Can they?
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