Is Twitter really that useful to business?
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Twitter has so now so firmly established itself into everyday life or ‘the zeitgeist’ (good word) that businesses feel that they have to have a presence on Twitter. With the majority of businesses feeling that Twitter is a requisite for success, whether Twitter is useful to business is a bit of a moot point. Until a huge conglomerate like Apple or indeed Twitter (does twitter have a twitter? Whoa metaphysical) stops using twitter, everyone else has to follow suit. Besides, the amount of time and effort it takes to maintain an account is so small, what do you really stand to lose? Apart from integrity.
Like any relationship however, commitment is important. After some stringent research, 3 minutes spent looking at some local companies past tweets, it becomes clear that many companies start out with the best intentions - tweeting once day about all manner of exciting developments, before later getting too bored or busy to keep it up. Usually, with a week gone by, the number of tweets begins slowly declining and any potential client clicking on the company profile will be greeted by a sparse wasteland, with the last known tweet dated from 2 months ago. Looking at the tweet output you’d be forgiven for thinking that the company hasn’t done anything worth tweeting about in 8 weeks. Of course this may not be true, but it is how it will appear. As with anything it has to be a careful balance, tweeting all the time about largely inane subjects doesn’t come off as too professional and could make you look like a misinformed, angry footballer. Two or three informative tweets a week is a good number. Treat it the same as an exercise routine, clearly exercising every single day is just wrong.
Twitter doesn’t really amount to a conversation, it actually represents someone digitally shouting random statements at everyone else. Asking questions on Twitter is a good way of integrating others and possibly opening a dialogue with your clients. Trending topics are also an extremely useful tool for finding out what’s... trendy. Sorry. The other nice thing about trending topics is that it gives us the fuzzy feeling that with everyone talking about the same thing, we could all really be friends. After social networking allowed the Egyptian protestors to get organised - Twitter has technically toppled dictatorships, we can’t really ignore it anymore.