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According to the Silicon Alley Insider, kids used to hate Twitter, but don’t anymore.
Actually, Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore!
“While Twitter’s user base historically favored older users, people between ages 12-24 have been Twitter’s fastest growing age group of late. And now that age group is actually disproportionately visiting Twitter, according to comScore.”
It might just be that it’s Monday morning, but I quite enjoy the futility of people’s attempts to make sense of how a user group they don’t understand use a technology whose purpose eludes them.
The introduction to the chart is based on an article in The New York Times, Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens:
“Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J., sends and receives 500 text messages a day. But she never uses Twitter, even though it publishes similar snippets of conversations and observations.
Her reluctance to use Twitter, a feeling shared by others in her age group, has not doomed the microblogging service. Just 11 percent of its users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore. Instead, Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations.”
I generally like The New York Times. But this article raises my eyebrows to well above my long-since-receded hairline.
Point 1: Despite the fact that Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J., never uses Twitter, the microblogging service is not doomed. Hmmm.
Point 2: Young people lead the way to popularising innovations. Hmmm.
Point 3: Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity. Leading to what?
On April 23rd of this year, I offered a $100 Amazon gift voucher to the first person who could provide me with a good answer to one simple question:
How do I use Twitter for my business?
“My question: How do I use Twitter for my business? I’m not interested in abstract ideas and theories, so please don’t bother with things like “generating leads”, “finding people with similar interests” or “finding people interested in your services”. I need real, concrete ideas that I can actually use. And I need evidence that your ideas could actually work.”
Twitter Flu – Win a $100 Amazon gift voucher
Despite 15 comments, the reward went unclaimed, as no-one was able to provide me with a good answer to my question.
So I’m asking the same question again, this time offering an Amazon gift voucher for $250.
No theories, no catchy phrases, just a real, actionable and useful answer.
The first person to come up with a good response gets the voucher.
The best usages I\’ve seen by Businesses using Twitter, is building up the hype on new product releases and generating a lot of interesting around a brand.
Take for instance LucasArts, they use Twitter (http://twitter.com/lucasartsgames) in a way that informs people about new products and upcoming releases in a teasing and fun way. They strengthen the overall interest in a upcoming release and communicate with users on their responses. Contests for guessing what the new product is, promotional codes for new games, exclusive screenshots and in-game footages you would only get through twitter and most valuable for them, direct user feedback!
Twitter is essentially your stage, present yourself in an interesting and good manner and you\’ll be able to direct the masses.
Just my 5 cents.
Ivo
I like to use a fishing analogy to explain Twitter to some clients.
Imagine a that all Twitter messages are a flowing river. This rivers has all types of data or fish in it. Some are really good fish with valuable information and others are minnows that don\’t amount to a good meal. Using your Twitter account you can either cast one hook and line into this river and pull out the fish to inspect it or you can expand that one-reel approach to a giant fish net and collect a lot of fish both good and bad.
Companies can use Twitter to collect user data and feedback by strategically targeting individuals or throwing the fish net out and see what you get. The important thing to remember is that the company\’s Twitter account should NOT only be treated as a fisherman, but also be a large valuable fish that contributes to the river\’s ecosystem. If you just stand on the shore and fish, you\’ll never really be recognized as part of the social media world.
Not always appropriate in every discussion, but it works for a lot of people (even non-fisherman like myself).
Um, I’d like to submit my own, but I think Keith already wins.
Fishing for information, whether it’s “consumer insights,” “brand mentions” or “search engine research” or any other stupid jargon phrase, Twitter is a cross-section of conversations going on… anywhere! You skip the “find people who think like us” reinforcement and see what real people are saying about you and your competitors.
If you can be honest enough to listen and ask unbiased questions, you’ll find that unpolished opinion of how well you’re really doing in the marketplace, and where you can improve.
Although twitter concept is really good, the major problem with it is that it\’s a bunch of unregulated data coming straight at you. You can\’t sort it, it\’s hard to group it. Only now you can search it, but it still brings you vast information that you have to filter yourself.
One good thing about twitter is its API. In fact most people use twitter via an application written based on this API: TweetDeck for example, rather than navigating to twitter.com. However, even with that it\’s hard for someone to get their message out there because chances are it will be lost in a sea of twitter updates from other sources.
A company that wants to leverage twitter service might want to build a custom application for it\’s users. One approach I really like is what SmartMoney did with their Market Map application (http://www.smartmoney.com/map-of-the-market/ unfortunately for me works only in IE). Building such application gives a user an overview of the data that can be filtered. Such application can be useful in news, service update and other sectors. For example, I used to follow dealnews, but after hundreds of updates per day, after a while I stopped following them because amount of information coming at me was just too big to make it useful.
Building such application can be ported to different media: Adobe AIR application, iPhone application or Google widget.
Twitter may not be for every business, or maybe not any, but it could still play a significant social and financial role. The non-friend entities I follow on twitter are mostly scientifically-oriented news organizations & politicians. Both sorts of individual pay for advertisement. I also have feeds from small local arts theatres. You don\’t have to be challenging M$ in order to have a viable business model. Twitter really could be one of the things just replacing newspapers.
I think twitter should charge anyone with over 500 followers a little. I think they’d pay. It’s like adsense, you *know* how many people are reading what you put out, so you know what it’s worth. And it’s only worth a little. But to many, many people.
Offer a daily discount coupon or giveaway and announce it only via Twitter. Give it a fair test by doing it faithfully for a few months. If people actually find you and take advantage of the offer, you’ve generated business in a measurable way. If nobody responds, then you’ve confirmed what you suspect and can move on to something else.
http://mixergy.com/guerilla-twitter/
Ta-da! And Marcus says it has worked for him.
He searches on related terms, finds upset customers of other clients or customers in the buying process, messages them to check out how their product compares, and apparently has often gotten customers from it.
I’m pretty sure he said he didn’t want to give away his secret in the interview, but he was kind enough to share anyways. 
I think perhaps your question is over simplistic because I don’t know enough about your business, and I don’t know enough about your customers.
The concept of social media, whether you use blogs, forums, twitter, skype-chat or whatever is to build community. Community is a powerful tool, especially if you have a situation where a customer is likely to be a repeat customer. It’s powerful for engaging the customers you already have, but it’s not really an “attraction” to people outside your community.
For starters, Twitter (and other social media) is not a good way to gain a whole bunch of new customers. It’s not the place I’d be searching to buy a new Point-Of-Sale system. But if I made POS systems, and twitter was a channel a lot of my customers used, then I could bring them together into a community.
That’s the key to the whole thing. If you take the community aspect out of twitter then there’s really no point in it anymore. For dry, impersonal data I can visit company web pages, get RSS feeds and so on.
Now some products are easier to build community around than others. And some channels are better suited to some communities than others. Are the problems your customers likely to face describable in 168 characters? Are the answers? Would most problems require you to answer them, or could some customers answer questions posed by other customers.
For example, DELL uses twitter to announce specials. But DELL’s customers are (a) computer literate and (b) likely to use their computers to socialise.
Could you do programming support, or IT Server support via twitter? Well I’m guessing only the most trivial questions and answers would be solvable this way. On the other hand if what you need is a conversation with a live human to bounce your problem off, then maybe it’s ok.
There’s a bakery somewhere that tweets as stuff comes out the oven. It’s only useful to a small number of people (probably people living or working within walking distance) but for that community it’s really useful.
But one thing is clear. Building community takes enormous amounts of time and effort. It won’t happen overnight (regardless of the channel you choose). It’s not a quick fix, and it’s likely to me a time & effort sinkhole for years. But building a community of people with the same specific needs in common is very valuable, and there are plenty of examples of that all over the web.
So back to your question. Twitter is useful because it is an alternate channel. A channel that is different to more “traditional” channels. It may be better, or worse, depending on the nature of your customers or your products. Like all channels it allows you to build community and gain credibility. Like all channels it can suck you dry with no results, or let you build an incredibly valuable community.
As far as Action goes you need to ask yourself;
a) would my customers benefit from belonging to a community of other people with like-minded problems?
b) do I have the time, expertise, and willingness to build this community?
c) do my customers have the ability to join the community?
On the last point, platforms do tend somewhat to dictate the kinds of communities that can be built on them. Because Facebook is so “personal” lots of businesses block facebook at the office. So building a business community around facebook could be difficult. Betty in Payroll may want to join your payroll community, but if Twitter is seen as “social” then chances are it’ll get blocked sooner or later.
Can you advertise for new customers on Twitter? Well no. You can “cold call” but folks would mostly just ignore you I guess. It’s not a good “spam channel” – at least not yet.
But if your customers (and potential customers) are already on twitter, then building a community on twitter, in addition to (not in place of) your other channels may bring them into the fold. You can engage them, dragging them to your other channels (web site etc) when important stuff happens. In this scenario Twitter enhances the existing channels, but does not replace them.
Of course not all customers want to be in community. When I buy a car all I really want is a car, not a bunch of new petrol-head friends who discuss horse-power, torque and compare shades of red used to cover the seats. Of course there are scads of people who’d just love to talk about cars all day. An excellent community to join if you sell specialized covers for the foot pedals in a car.
In summary – what can you use Twitter for? Well it depends on your business, and your customers. There are lots of ideas out there, but only you can build the idea to suit your business.
People on twitter tend to follow their followers, so if you follow 1 million users, almost 1 million users will follow you …and see your ads(tweets)
“How do I use Twitter for my business?”
You don’t
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/12/03/guy-kawasaki:-how-use-twitter-twool
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-to-drive-traffic-with-repeat-tweets-guy-kawasaki
And evidence that the tip I posted works is right in the comments on that same URL (I think it’s more difficult to re-find the efficacy part in the 1-hour video):
“I am a happy victim of Marcus’ twitter marketing.
I was having issues setting up get satisfaction for my company. They didn’t respond via email or their own damn tool so I tried hailing them on Twitter. Uservoice immediately chimed in and offered to help. Now I am a happy paying customer and will never miss an opportunity (like this) to tell people how much I love UserVoice.
pete”
I posted this on the JOS forum, too – pasting here as well:
Twitter is a component of marketing (note: this usually doesn’t replace “real” marketing — it’s another tool in the toolbox).
The two main modes of Twitter use for business are inbound and outboud, or receive and send. You should always start with inbound (receiving), especially if you’re inexperienced.
Inbound Twitter use allows you to actively monitor the “twitter universe” for references to your brand or product. Set up some searches (Google this if you want to learn how) so you can see what people are saying about you. This is the easiest way to start, and it can yield benefits regardless of whether you choose to respond actively.
I saw this in action last year when I tweeted something about a corny Ford commercial I saw — I used the hashtag #Ford in my post, and within a few minutes, I received a message from Scott Monty — the head of Social Media for Ford. This indicated that despite the goofy ad, Ford had a sharp guy keeping an eye on the Ford brand online. Instant credibility boost for Ford, IMO.
Next: outbound Twitter use (sending). A natural response to listening to customers is to start answering questions — this is a great place to start with outbound tweets because you’re (hopefully) saying something worthwhile. Just be sure to keep it clean and respectful, because you’re speaking on behalf of your brand. Don’t try to be so dry and machine-like, though. A lot of the appeal of Twitter is that the communication feels like it’s person-to-person even though it’s multicast on a large scale.
Twitter is sometimes called micro-blogging for a reason – you’re building a social media presence in much the same way you would be if you were blogging — you’re just doing it 140 characters at a time.
If done effectively, you’ll be marketing to people without them feeling like this is traditional marketing. You’re shooting for honest and transparent without ever becoming unprofessional or disrespectful. If you do it right, you’ll build trust with your customers.
“How do I use Twitter for my business?”
It’s pretty easy to do, and definitely *not* what Twitter was intended for. We use Twitter as a *free* keyword advertising system. Just like Google, but not as much search traffic and no charges. You write 140 character ads, generally trying to stress something informative and giving a product link. You make sure to include your keyword with a # in front of it in the text. This helps the Twitter specific search systems locate your keyword. Due to text limitations you can only handle one keyword per “tweet”.
We also use Twitter to keep track of our competition and “one-up” them. Sign on to follow your competitor’s tweets. If they tweet about a product that you also make- write a better tweet on your product, making sure to include your #keyword. For example, if your competitor brags about their 60 days of free support, you brag about your 1 year of free support and 30 day money back guarantee.
We make 1 – 2 additional sales a week this way. We have never advertised our twitter account/name, but new people find us all the time. They become followers, buy something, then stop following us. Note I essentially spend no time on this project. I follow a number of scientific tweets and look in every day or so. It takes almost no effort to scan my competitor’s tweets and compose a new one 3 or 4 times a week.
CC’d from BoS for good measure…
I’ve been using Twitter since the beginning of this year to try to
a) Get my head around it
b) Overcome my inbuilt hostility to it
c) See if there was a use for it.
Things I’ve tried:
1. I set up an account on Twollow and TweeLater. I automatically followed people who mentioned certain keywords. I’d guess around 80% of people would follow me back and they were sent a ‘first contact’ DM via TweetLater, creating an instant readership.
You can spot these accounts quite easily because you can build a readership very quickly while tweeting very little. You’ll also see figures like “Following 1000, Friends 800, Tweets 3″.
I discontinued this namely because I found that people who were mindless enough to follow me just because I followed them were usually following SO MANY people that they would be unlikely to see my tweets anyway. So I removed ALL friends and started again.
2. I set up searches in TweetDeck/BDule etc for certain terms, people talking about things relevant to my product. I would then try and parachute in to the conversation to try and direct them to my web site.
I discontinued this because it was very time intensive and totally unproductive.
3. One idea I’ve yet to test is giving away free licenses via Twitter. Sort of…”The next person to reply to me with the word #paperless gets a free copy”.
4. As a user, I follow excruciatingly few users. I get status update from Remember The Milk. And I think I follow Zoho too. I like services that use Twitter – Remember the Milk for example sends me Tweets as reminders. The immediacy of Twitter suits things like status updates and reminders.
So where is my usage now with Twitter?
———–
I tweet about updates to my product.
I tweet about bits of work I’ve just completed.
I offer Twitter as a way of contacting me for help.
I tweet posts/updates to my blog.
I monitor Twitter for keywords, and retweet or interact where relevant. I also answer questions and offer advice (only when a user is asking an open question or inviting opinion).
Example recently, I blogged about problems and workarounds for Scansnap users on Snow Leopard – brought in a lot of traffic.
I tweet links to blog posts that would be relevant to users/potential users. In other words, I try to provide a stream that is interesting and valuable to users/potential users.
A very good way to use Twitter is by going for the viral retweet. There are numerous tips etc, but most retweets contain a description of something interesting to your followers, a link, and maybe a request to retweet.
I try to keep chit chat to a minimum. People tire very quickly of always listening to one side of a conversation. Answering questions/giving support is different, it shows reachability and dedication. Talking with your mate Phil about how wasted you both were last night is a no-no.
When you follow someone, you’re often only listening to one side of a conversation. By interacting with key players in your domain (like a prominent Scanner reviewer for me), some of his followers will check out your stream/website to see if it too might be of value to them.
Getting a retweet from a key player is akin to getting a link from tech crunch, lifehacker or some such.
Example of a big company reaching out over Twitter – I said some complimentary things about a major scanner manufacturer in a tweet, and have since been contacted by them to talk about some sort of partnership (second meeting tomorrow).
Twitter is, I think, a good thing. But like all shiny new technology, we need to tame it, de-hype it, and make it work for us.
Like it or not, your customers and potential customers (and a lot of them) are using Twitter. Just like you learn how to work a room full of conference delegates, just how you learn to work the blogosphere, learn to work Twitter.
If nothing else, link up your blog and Facebook pages to post updates to Twitter, and just monitor replies. Virtually zero effort.
Facebook is about connecting with people you know. Twitter is about connecting with people with similar interests.
How do I use Twitter for my business?
Is it a trick question? You use Twitter for your business by advertising this reward scheme to drive people to your article and then on to your website? Or you use Twitter to talk about banks to get other peoples oppinions on which is the best one?
Perhaps the question you had in mind was How SHOULD I use Twitter for my business?
In which case there are two answers. You could be like almost every other business on Twitter and focus on gaining followers either to establish a reputaion as an expert in your field or to push your own links out there in the hope that people will follow them. You could even set up automated services to search for particular topics, automatically follow people who mention keywords, automatically schedule Tweets or if you\’re really blackhat keep an eye on trending topics and tweet your links along with todays most popular hashtags.
The second answer is my personal favourite though. JUST ANSWER THE GODDAMN QUESTION… WHAT ARE YOU DOING? If your life is all about your work then that will be reflected in your tweets. If you only tweet while working, that will come through too. If on the other hand you tweet about your local area, your passions, your complaints then people you have something in common with will find you. Twitter is chaos, like the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a tropical storm. It\’s the ultimate news channel but at the same time you can find out that Bob down the road is jumping up and down because he put something he shouldn\’t in his recycling bin. How you use it is really up to you and depends on what you want from it.
Good luck with it anyway. Binman Harry (bin-trucks.co.uk)
Did you know you can increase your software sales by using the Web 2.0 tool named Twitter in your marketing and sales efforts?
I will come to the “how to make money” part shortly, but first I will tell you a little bit about the phenomenon Twitter, in case you haven’t heard about it before or are unsure of exactly what’s going on.
Imagine the coffee machine or lunch restaurant at your workplace. The place most people meet up and share both gossip and hopefully get some work talk done too. If you can picture that, then you have an understanding of what twitter is about. It’s a gathering point for a lot of people online. It’s a dialog between people and as you will discover shortly it opens fantastic opportunities both socially and for creating business. And you don’t need a website, blog or marketing funds. It’s all free.
So how can Twitter assist you in selling and marketing software? As you soon will see links are a big and natural part of the conversations going on in Twitter. People are also much more inclined to click your links in Twitter than for example in email marketing, links on websites or blogs. And it will also take you very little time to write your Twitter messages. I spend about a minute to write a twitter message.
So, I just told you why you can make money. Now let’s dig into the how…
Step one, sign up to twitter. Go to twitter.com and create a new account. This will take you a couple of seconds.
Step two, sign up to a bunch of twitters. You find Twitters in twitter. The process is very simple and you will understand it as soon as you have tried. The easiest way to find interesting Twitters are through people that are already authorities in your marketplace and other interest areas. Authors, bloggers and so on.
Twitters you may find interesting to follow: @gillberg, @colligan, @softwareguide (this is an example of a business twitter with messages related to software).
My initial tests suggest you can get a ratio about one to four, e.g. for every 4 people you follow one will follow you. And if you follow me, I will follow you
Step three, after signing up and subscribing to a few Twitters it’s time to set up your account. For people to sign up to follow you it’s important that you have a short bio and if you have a website or blog, include a link too.
This should help you get a higher ratio of followers and the followers will also be more targeted. Say you are interested in affiliate marketing. If likeminded people see you in Twitter and check out your bio they are more likely to subscribe to your Twitter messages.
When setting up the account I recommend you use a picture of yourself. This will make you more trustworthy and human.
Step four, listen to the communication. Twittering is pretty straight forward process, but it’s good to get a feel for the general communication.
And finally, step five — time to start twittering.
Some Twitter tips.
* Be personal. Tell people a little bit about yourself, this will make you more human and trustworthy.
* Use mystique to get the click. For example; Check this out: [link], Wow, this is cool: [link] and so on. I think you get the picture.
* When it’s appropriate, interact with other Twitters using the reply button.
* Share valuable information, if you spam you will end up without anyone reading your posts pretty soon.
* Don’t talk about yourself too much.
* Use tracking for your links. I use klikdeal (klikdeal.com) for to set up my twitter links. This will pretty soon give you an overview of what is being clicked and what’s not. Avoid tinyurl as this doesn’t give you tracking capabilities. When measuring the results of your links with klikdeal you get an understanding of what subjects your audience is interesting in. This can be very valuable for your other software marketing efforts as well.
Looking forward to see your Twitters and click your links. A big thank you goes out to Paul Colligan for introducing me to twitter.
(c) PETER GILLBERG is the owner of http://www.SoftwareCasa.com and responsible for millions of dollars in software sales. He also owns a consulting business for software publishers, teaching them how to implement online marketing and sales strategies. You can reach Peter by visiting his website: http://www.SoftwareMarketingSecrets.com
Did anyone win this? What’s the status?