Unless you’ve spent the last 6 months in a vacuum, you’ve probably heard something about Twitter and micro-blogging – the “apparent” newest trend in social media / networking.
Being inherently curious of any online tool that has certain authoritative figures in the Internet Marketing field buzzing with excitement, I decided to spend a little time looking into Twitter lately.
I’ve read authoritative articles on the subject, J.B. Allen’s “The Tweet Virus”, the gushing of numerous gurus, and I am currently in the middle of Joel Comm’s new book on the subject, “Twitter Power: How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet At A Time.”
And I don’t get it.
Twitter might be fun, but it is one heck of an inefficient business building tool. That’s how it looks to me – at least for my business. So far.
Am I missing something?
Well, here’s how I see it…
Any strategies I implement on my main sites (UltimateFatBurner.com and Real-Customer-Comments.com) have to leverage my time effectively, delivering the best possible return for my investment. While I’ll admit Twitter appears to offer benefits for SOME marketers, I can think of much better uses of my time than establishing the sort of Twitter following it would take to make any difference to my current traffic levels and/or revenue.
Here’s the gist of Twitter for marketers…
Twitter can be used to build a number of followers, who can be gently exposed to your business over time, and may eventually become customers.
The problem with Twitter is that if you want to use it effectively and have it work for you, you have to adhere to an established protocol of etiquette (for instance, you cannot bombard followers with your sales message; this is not acceptable. You will brand yourself as a pariah and lose your followers if you do). Twitter is not a “pure” marketing medium, and those who Twitter do not consider themselves “targets” for marketing.
To build a large group of followers, you need to either…
- Establish yourself as an authority within your niche.
- Develop relationships with the authorities within your niche, and capitalize on that by having their followers become yours.
- Follow a large number of people, many of whom will “follow you back”, if only out of a sense of obligation.
The fastest way to build a large list of followers is to do the latter; follow a ton of people. The problem with this is twofold; first, the majority of these people are completely un-targeted to your marketing message, and two, you’ll be receiving regular updates from a large number of people you have no interest in “hearing” from. Then of course, you’ll need to provide regular, witty, credibility-boosting, informative “tweets”…
… all limited to 140 characters of text.
Obviously then, building a large list of un-targeted followers is of little value. Your smartest option is to build a list of extremely targeted prospects.
And that takes time.
To me, it makes much more sense to create new product reviews. (To put things into proper context: I’m investigating Twitter as an option to further leverage my UltimateFatBurner.com domain, which reviews weight loss products, body building supplements and functional foods). Every review is inherently “keyword focused” and constructed to rank well. Additionally, UltimateFatBurner.com has a lot of credibility with the SEs (Search Engines), so new content is usually listed and driving highly targeted traffic within a few days. And it will continue to do so, day in and day out, forever.
I don’t need to spend hours messing around with Twitter searching for folks who are interested in my message.
Why would I, when the SEs will send qualified visitors right to me?
That said, I can see where it might make sense to utilize Twitter to establish new contacts and build a following.
If you are a software designer, a copywriter – heck, if you provide any service or sell any product where a new customer is worth hundreds, even thousands of dollars, it makes sense to cultivate a large following on Twitter. In other words, the potential payoff is worth the investment of your time. There are other possibilities as well; if you sell a moderately priced digital product, you might be further able to leverage your Twitter efforts to recruit affiliates. These will generate additional sales and exposure for you.
But for me, it’s a different story. UltimateFatBurner.com is monetized by advertising and affiliate programs, and the value of every visitor is measured in pennies – not nickels or dimes, and certainly not dollars. So I don’t see Twitter as being a good investment, time-wise.
Will that change?
Possibly. Maybe I’ll finish Joel’s book and realize I’ve made a huge mistake (but I doubt it). More than likely, Twitter will only make sense for me when the value of a single visitor to my sites increases dramatically. And, since I’m not changing my monetization model, that’s unlikely to happen.
Bottom line?
The beauty of having an Internet business is that it really allows you to work smarter, not harder. At the same time, it’s SOOOOO easy to get sidetracked by things that can get in the way of building your business. Any time something new comes up (like Twitter) it’s important not to get caught up in the hype. Instead, carefully analyze the benefits as it pertains to your business. And if it doesn’t make sense to you, don’t get caught up in it, just because “everyone else is doing it.”
Chances are, you’ll only be wasting your time.
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