Could Your Time Be Better Spent Elsewhere?
A question I’m often asked by small business owners is “can you show me how to use Twitter?”
My reply is “yes, but why do you want to use it?”
In this post I’ll look at some of the real reasons small business owners use Twitter and why they’re wasting their time.
Don’t get me wrong, Twitter can be a very useful tool. Since I started this blog in October 2010 it’s been my second biggest source of traffic and helped me raise my profile in the blogging community.
But is it really something all small business owners should be doing?
Here are five reasons small business owners use Twitter.
- Because someone told me to
This is one I hear a lot. Many small business owners start using Twitter because someone told them they should. Launching a Twitter presence because you feel you should and without any idea what you’re trying to achieve can be a complete waste of your time.
- To get more online sales
While this is a valid reason to use Twitter, unfortunately many SMEs expect instant sales just by tweeting a blatant advert for their products or services.
- Because my competitors are on there
Most of your competitors may be on Twitter but do you know what they’re getting out of it? It’s easy to second guess the benefits others are getting, but the reality might be they’re spending lots of time on there without getting any return.
- To get people following me
Why do you want people following you? It’s easy to use automated Twitter tools to amass thousands of followers, but what’s the point if only a very small percentage of them are actually interested in what you have to say?
- Increase traffic to my website
In theory this should be easy; you post regular tweets and people think “oh, that sounds interesting” and visit your website or company blog.
In reality, your tweets are fighting to be read amongst hundreds or thousands of others at any given time in people’s streams. You could try getting over this by tweeting every 10 minutes or so but this is a waste of time and will actually have the opposite effect and lead to less people clicking on your links.
The main point to take away from this post is you should have a clear and defined focus on why you want to use Twitter before you start.
If you want to use it to get social with other business owners online, that’s fine, but don’t let it distract you from the day-to-day running of your own business and making money.
What do you think? Are you using Twitter for the right reasons? Share your comments and thoughts below.
I just restarted tweeting myself. I don’t have a set plan but few good ideas; I’ll get back to ya.
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing recently posted..How To Refund Domain Names
Hi Dennis, I look forward to reading your tweets as you re-emerge in Twitterland
Good points, I’ve been using Twitter for almost over a year and I’d like to think that I’ve built a nice little number of followers so far, I am sure that tweeting my posts and links and what have you does generate a certain level of traffic and one or two of those might convert but to be really honest I last month I received 28 visits from Twitter from over 10k page views, pretty poor huh. So I personally don’t think that using Twitter now is as much as a great deal as I once thought. I tend to concentrate on just using Twitter to engage with other followers and although I continue to share post on a daily basis I’m somewhat less dependent on it otherwise.
Fabrizio recently posted..Giveaway- Win Darren Rowse’s New eBook ‘ProBloggers Guide To Your First Week Of Blogging’ 2 Copies Up For Grabs!
Hi Fabrizio, thanks for your feedback and comments. That’s an interesting statistic you’ve given there. My blog seems to be the opposite just now with the majority of visits from Twitter and less from elsewhere.
I think it’s getting harder to cut through all the noise on Twitter so am certainly not counting on it to keep delivering most of my traffic.
I’ve been using Twitter for a little over 2 years now. When I first started I would say that i started using it because I heard about it from another blogger who made it sound pretty cool. I’ve been hooked ever since, as a matter of fact Im coming up on my 20,000th tweet.
Extreme John recently posted..5 Ways Using LinkedIn Can Help You in Business
Hi John, great to have you on my blog! I’m just coming up for 500 tweets so have some catching up to do. I think Twitter is very useful for bloggers but maybe not suited to small business owners. Thanks for popping over – Jamie