Twitter is it Worth it? [Archive]

georgelopez66

15th July 2010, 03:54

We all know the twitter craze thats going around.
I used twitter and not the biggest fan of it.
I use it for personal reasons (connect w/ friends, family)
But i see people saying there making like 5 figures a month
and twitter is there main traffic source. Thats something
i find hard to believe.
Twitter is cool to keep in touch with friends and family.

For getting traffic and growing your business is twitter
Worth It?

Your Thoughts!!

LinkBuildingServices

15th July 2010, 07:23

Hi,
yes you can get a huge traffic. But you need a huge follower. But you can not have a crawler count as a back link. Because twitter gives nofollow links

OldWelshGuy

15th July 2010, 07:41

what he said above. for link juice it is worthless, but it does help get pages spidered, and it can help to bring in traffic. It can also help to brand you.

MonicaSharma

15th July 2010, 07:48

Yes I agree with Georgelopez66.

wood1e2

15th July 2010, 08:58

You can also spend all your time twittering and not getting any sales.!!

No point being known as the twitterer for 'Baby Clothes' and you sell an extra pack of nappies!!

Obviously you have to be in it to win, so along with a good website, blogging etc etc Twitter can be an added benefit....

Or it can become a place of benign boring dross!!!

Remember also that just because there is 1.5 million following you, 1.4999 could be Russain sex goddesses, Thai lady boy farmas... :)

venlions

15th July 2010, 13:18

wood1e2

15th July 2010, 13:22

Yeah right...or should that be 'I get yeah'!!! :)

eventdomain

15th July 2010, 15:58

But you need a huge follower. But you can not have a crawler count as a back link. Because twitter gives nofollow links

Yes, Twitter are very very smart. Great for themselves - but its not for advertisers.

mattsaw

15th July 2010, 17:14

what he said above. for link juice it is worthless, but it does help get pages spidered, and it can help to bring in traffic. It can also help to brand you.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Google did start looking closely at links being posted on Twitter. Over the past couple of years it has canabilised a massive portion of the link graph. If not now, but in the future it makes sense for thm to be using this data in some form

An Oasis

15th July 2010, 18:28

its exactly like a facebook status
but its cool
you can follow all these famous people and see what their doin and stuff
the president has one to
so i mean it has to be worth gettin :]
its a pretty cool site you should get one :]

Worst business advice I've seen in many moons...who gives a flying F if a president has one, ditto that for famous people!?!?

Better advice for you, work on getting traffic to your website rather than rely upon some third party staying the course and delivering for you.

mylee

16th July 2010, 07:44

The point is the more followers the more traffic.

CraigieDD

16th July 2010, 09:06

You have to look at Twitter and how it will fit into your marketing and communications plan.

For example, you could have a Facebook page which is for announcing events and putting up chatty content about your business, presenting the human face of the business.

Your blog could be more serious "whitepaper" style content, genuinely useful to people in your industry or in the market for your products and services.

Your twitter account could be solely for up to the minute special offers, linking to pages on your website. A nice link on your website saying "follow us in twitter for exclusive offers" or the like may prove successful.

You'll find many people on here that rarely duplicate the content across all three. There's a reason for that.

More importantly all of this stuff should be tested and measured.

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 10:45

Twitter is NOT a marketing tool, it was designed for people to post about lifestyle things, and like all these social ideas its being used for marketing purposes because its easy to spam and free.

No wonder this stuff fails, it wasn't meant to be a business tool. Just like everything else and like celebrities, its talked about far too much and in your face too often.

I have tested this on websites and found that when an open form is used, it gets spammed with porn, urls and stupid comments, if you allow easy entry then it will be taken advantage of. Twitter is no different.

I don't get this facination at all, if I want to talk about something or market my business, I use a blog to do it, I don't go to twitter anymore.

Social sites aren't information websites, portals or search engines, they are for social interaction and nothing more. You wouldn't use a screwdriver to paint a fence, so why use Twitter to market a business :(

CraigieDD

16th July 2010, 10:59

Twitter is NOT a marketing tool, it was designed for people to post about lifestyle things, and like all these social ideas its being used for marketing purposes because its easy to spam and free.

.....

they are for social interaction and nothing more. You wouldn't use a screwdriver to paint a fence, so why use Twitter to market a business :(

Couldn't disagree more.

Twitter is just another channel. It's how you utilise it that counts. Dell attributed £5M of sales directly to their Twitter channel at the tail end of last year. At the other end of the scale a friend who runs a guided tour company in Scotland attributes 20% of all his sales to his Twitter channel - Why? Because he provides genuinely interesting information to his audience and special deals, only available to his twitter followers.

Simply Clicks

16th July 2010, 11:44

Despite the huge media attention focused on Twitter I see very little evidence of real commercial value to any of my clients - even when they have generated significant traffic volumes from the service.

mattsaw

16th July 2010, 12:46

Twitter is NOT a marketing tool, it was designed for people to post about lifestyle things, and like all these social ideas its being used for marketing purposes because its easy to spam and free.Really? What are you basing that assumption on. Have you never tried to use it, or tried and failed?

Incidently enough I'm working with a client on a campaign at the moment. We seeded a link to a article they posted on their site this morning.

So far they have received over 800 rewteets, over 14,000 Facebook likes and close to 20,000 site visits - and we're currently only halfway into the day.

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/5849/14900026.gif

Add to that mentions so far in the Guardian and Telegraph websites, making it onto some well known mailing lists, many mentions already on niche blogs.

- I would place the nominal value of the links already aquired at over £5-6k
- Branding and awareness, I estimate by the end of the weekend the site will have received 50-60k visitors, maybe more depending on media uptake
- The value of the press mentions already translates into several hundreds of pounds worth of PR agency work
- The SEO value remains to be seen, it's far too early to draw any conclusions, but I expect to see significant improvements in residual serach traffic in the coming weeks.

But, obviously because it doesn't work for you Twitter is useless for marketing. ;)

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 12:50

Dell attributed £5M of sales directly to their Twitter channel

People know Dell, and I assure you people don't buy from Dell bcos of Twitter posts.

Dell's name gets them noise and sales - not twitter!

DotNetWebs

16th July 2010, 12:57

People know Dell, and I assure you people don't buy from Dell bcos of Twitter posts.

Dell's name gets them noise and sales - not twitter!

There are plenty of people that would disagree with you:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=dell+twitter+case+study&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Regards

Dotty

sysops

16th July 2010, 13:13

So far they have received over 800 rewteets, over 14,000 Facebook likes and close to 20,000 site visits - and we're currently only halfway into the day.

Any sales?

sysops

16th July 2010, 13:15

Twitter is the one of the worst things ever invented. It is of very little value, yet is able to consume vast amount of man-hours very easily.

Rebecca May

16th July 2010, 13:17

Twitter is about spreading your message, generating visitors to your site (not all of them useful), it says something about you/your brand as twitter tends to be regarded as trendy and very "now" BUT it does not pass page rank e.g. help you with your search engine rankings.

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 13:17

There are plenty of people that would disagree with you:

Great, fantastic..... if it works for all those, then they should keep doing it.

Sure I got some Tweets, but I learnt that people are just following to be followed.... and thus cannot be people with a genuine interest, their just doing it to build up their own followers. Perhaps its entertainment for them, who knows. This is just a collectors haven, its people collecting followers :| maybe, its like a swap card game or collecting football stickers.

But its a craze, and like all crazes it wont last long without revenue. But as soon as they charge, people will lose interest and the spammers will drop off, and when that happens any value will be gone.

mattsaw

16th July 2010, 13:23

Any sales?

Yes, a few, as well as some sponsorship and parnership requests. Too early to tell so far though.

Not everything can (or should) be measured in direct sales volumes though, marketing doesn't often doesn't work like that - i.e. it's hardly ever a direct a leads to b scenario.

An example - a previous project (similar to this) that I workd with a PR client on. We saw similar uptake figures. Twitter was never a vehicle to direct sales, but rather a way of connecting with incluencers - bloggers, journalists and the media. Targeting exposure, press coverage and links above direct sales.

Everybody is going to use Twitter/Social media differently, but I'm of the firm opinion that most smaller companies shouldn't be trying to connect with consumers, but connecting with influencers instead.

In two weeks my client estimated he picked-up around £40,000 worth of business as a result of the press coverage that he received.

In addition to that he also began to (with 14 days) rank in the top three results for one of his primary keyword (as a result of the links aquired to the site) we were targeting. Since then as a result of that he has picked-up Kellogs as a client via them finding him for that keyword.

Not bad results for something that is useless for marketing.......

sysops

16th July 2010, 13:27

Yes, a few, as well as some sponsorship and parnership requests. Too early to tell so far though.

A few? With that much traffic, you say *a few*?

Not everything can (or should) be measured in direct sales volumes though, marketing doesn't often doesn't work like that - i.e. it's hardly every a direct a leads to b scenario.

Ah, the heady aroma of marketing ********.

"Don't worry, it doesn't matter if the £10k you've just spent with us on this marketng campaign doesn't drive any sales - that's just not how marketing works". Been there too many times.

mattsaw

16th July 2010, 13:32

:D

I think we can safely say that in this thread useless = I don't understand how it works ;)

I went as far to break down the value in terms of sales, link value and directly attributale sales.

If you can't be bothered to read it that's not my problem.

I honestly don't get why so many people feel so threatened by Twitter, I think mostly it's a lack of understanding of how it works, because they don't 'get it' therefore it's rubbish :)

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 13:33

But, obviously because it doesn't work for you Twitter is useless for marketing. ;)

Twitter's not a marketing tool... Its a social message book- at the most its a post-it note for the web, with anyone slapping their stuff and spam hoping they get popular off it.

But then again, I'm in the enviable position of owning 2 huge traffic generating websites, so I don't need to worry about Twitter

sysops

16th July 2010, 13:34

mattsaw

16th July 2010, 13:45

Tell you what, if you'd like to prove me wrong, and get paid for doing so, drop me a PM. I'm always up for wasting money on marketing experiments, and hey, it is Friday after all.

Tell you what, depending on your industry I'll do it for free. Some are easier than others as the key is in the concept, the syndication and promotion is easy if you have the network.

sysops

16th July 2010, 13:47

Tell you what, depending on your industry I'll do it for free. Some are easier than others as the key is in the concept, the syndication and promotion is easy if you have the network.

Appreciate the offer, but I like to pay for my marketing follies - it would feel weird otherwise. Can you PM me your email address, and we can set this up?

dots and spots Jeff

16th July 2010, 14:17

What Twitter - and Facebook - do is they 'democratise the web.'

Most people on this forum are pretty tech savvy and most will have a website or blog or both.

But people on this forum aren't most people and most people don't have a webiste, blog or any other 'web presence' other than Twitter and Facebook.

What Twitter allows them to do is say "Hey, I found this on the web - I liked it, you might like it to. Go and have a look. www.somesite " Now anyone can recommend a site, not just someone who blogs or who runs a website.

A spammers paradise? - It could be, but I don't think it is. People soon unfollow those who spam.

Twitter and Facebook et al are shifting the ownership of the web from the technocrats into hands of the 'masses' and giving them a voice online, and that is why it is so important.

Jeff

Cool Moggy

16th July 2010, 15:22

Don't advertise. Do talk to people and take apart in the conversation. Retweet useful business or techie stuff. Post URLs to interesting blogs. Tweet your own blog posts, though not ad nauseam. It will all help you climb the search engines.

Build relationships in your network and find new business friends.

Eventually the referrals will come from your network (don't forget to give referrals too). I have a current juicy project which a Twitter friend spotted in her network and tweeted to me and the introducer. Twitter is great, but it is a tool and you need to know how to use it for marketing. That knowledge stems from knowing how to network effecively.

CraigieDD

16th July 2010, 15:35

People know Dell, and I assure you people don't buy from Dell bcos of Twitter posts.

Dell's name gets them noise and sales - not twitter!

No... The content they sent out via their twitter feed got them sales.

Have you read the E-Consultancy report on their campaign?

It was specially formatted and optimised for their twitter audience - a demographic that wasn't part of their core business.

They believe that of the £5M sales generated that over £4M was genuinely new custom.

And I'm afraid your argument falls over as my mates runs his small company himself. And as other people have pointed out, he provides genuinely useful and inspiring content for his followers in bite sized chunks. Ideal for consuming information on the move.

Will Twitter go away, probably, eventually. Will Facebook die. Probably eventually. But while they are here, why not use them?

I'd be interested to see what you sent out to see if we could help you with this channel.

CraigieDD

16th July 2010, 15:43

Don't advertise. Do talk to people and take apart in the conversation. Retweet useful business or techie stuff. Post URLs to interesting blogs.
...

tool and you need to know how to use it for marketing. That knowledge stems from knowing how to network effecively.

Cool Moggy. It may have been your first post. But it's a good one. I couldn't have summed it up better myself - and I'm a big-head so that's hard for me to say .. ;-)

It astonishes me that some business people in this forum will dismiss a technology because they haven't studied it enough or got an expert in to utilise it properly.

CHEERS!

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 16:16

some business people in this forum will dismiss a technology because they haven't studied it enough or got an expert in to utilise it properly.

You're suggesting people pay ££££ for some expert to tell them how to post using Twitter? (Sorry, Marketing cough, cough). Its hardly rocket science is it, and to expect savvy people to inccur a fee to do something so simple is frightening advice.

Wait a minute - here comes the Twitter Marketing Association, the trade professional body for Twitter Consultants......

Ka-ching :D

jmsclark

16th July 2010, 17:40

as far as i know twitter is the best marketing tool these days , more powerful than facebook.

though my personal success not so good but its a fact that its a good tool

eventdomain

16th July 2010, 18:45

Even though I hate what Twitter is, I have to admire the amount of users it gets, but that can never replace the usefulness of websites packed full of searchable businesses and biz information.

It will never beat Facebook, mainly as Facebook allows for user content pages, where Twitter cannot. People do search for information, and that will never change...

The social sector is very young, nobody knows which way it'll go and people know what Facebook is, they know what Twitter is, but its risky to change what these sites currently offer. To start selling business adverts could alienate social users, and they aren't there to buy products - they hang out to chat and make friends etc.

If facebook loses its users, well, its going to have impact....

jmsclark

17th July 2010, 09:02

rightly said , i too am eager to see where the social media goes next , i hope we can see something concrete in near future

CraigieDD

17th July 2010, 10:02

You're suggesting people pay ££££ for some expert to tell them how to post using Twitter? (Sorry, Marketing cough, cough). Its hardly rocket science

....

Twitter Marketing Association, the trade professional body for Twitter Consultants......

Ka-ching :D

All I'm saying that if you don't know how to utilise a channel then get an expert in who does know.

That's not bad advice. Getting good people who are experts in their field is a plan for growth. Flailing around in something you can't make work isn't.

I spoke to WeBuyAnyCar recently and they have someone specifically employed to handle their twitter feed and their Facebook page.

Not sure what your logic is here.

You're saying on one hand you can't make it work but on the other your not prepared to pay for help to make it work....

I expect we might have to agree to differ on this topic. ;-)

An Oasis

17th July 2010, 11:04

Appreciate the offer, but I like to pay for my marketing follies - it would feel weird otherwise. Can you PM me your email address, and we can set this up?

Good grief a Twitter Yes camper and a No camper getting together and actually testing the waters. This could turn into one of the most interesting threads on UKBF.:eek:

Good luck boys!;)

CraigieDD

17th July 2010, 11:43

Appreciate the offer, but I like to pay for my marketing follies - it would feel weird otherwise. Can you PM me your email address, and we can set this up?

Keep us up to date on this one.

eventdomain

17th July 2010, 13:00

You're saying on one hand you can't make it work

I already said that I dont need to bother with Twitter.

Twitter is just a glorified blog, its nothing special in what it actually does, and I could build a competitor to it in probably 2 months, and blow it out of the water in both traffic delivery and direct enquiries straight to the advertiser.

Twitter is only a very basic database and user system, there are many websites who beat it hands down for usefulness and value. Heck, there are incredible blog websites that offer more value than Twitter ever will, never mind info-portals.

People only like Twitter because its free, now you take that freebie away and see what's left.

CraigieDD

17th July 2010, 13:25

...

I could build a competitor to it in probably 2 months, and blow it out of the water in both traffic delivery and direct enquiries straight to the advertiser.

.

Interesting. But I've given you real world examples of how it's been a success for real companies. At the moment you're backing up your point with nothing more than vapourware.

I'm not saying you couldn't build the system, I'm sure you could. But If you look at Twitter's PR machine and how it rolled into action then I'd have to say you might struggle to compete.

Rarely, does the best solution work. The solution that is marketed best tends to become the most popular.

I'd say let's draw a line under this. You don't see the value and others do.

eventdomain

17th July 2010, 14:40

But If you look at Twitter's PR machine and how it rolled into action then I'd have to say you might struggle to compete.

Ahh, now hang on bcos you don't know what PR I have going on at the moment. I have got into the national press easily, and regularly get press in specialist magazines. My next one will be in September issue of Hotel Magazine.

But anyway:

Twitter is just a bunch of PR talk, if you remove that, then you're left with a database that's not worth much apart from people saying Come, check out our biz services

I wouldn't call Twitter innovative at all. It has no longevity, and once the PR ride is over, the curiosity will end and it'll all be over. Other services will replace it and be content-rich, and information will always fill a need that Twitter cannot.

jmsclark

17th July 2010, 14:48

hi,

yes twitter is very good enough to promote there the sites. A good place to promote businesses. Promoting in twitter can drive many traffics to the site. Facebook is also one of the best social networking sites to promote businesses or websites.

thanks,

CraigieDD

17th July 2010, 16:06

Ahh, now hang on bcos you don't know what ...

I wouldn't call Twitter innovative at all. It has no longevity, and once the PR ride is over, the curiosity will end and it'll all be over. Other services will replace it and be content-rich, and information will always fill a need that Twitter cannot.

Wow, we actually agree on something. ;-)

But while it's around why not take advantage? If we wait for the "next big thing" we miss out on what's current.

eventdomain

17th July 2010, 17:41

If we wait for the "next big thing" we miss out on what's current.

Oh the next big thing has been done already. There's quite a few large companies inventing stuff for the web, then you have the entrepreneurs ofcourse......

So there is lots happening, but it takes about 2 years for the projects to hit the headlines. Notgoingtouni was the last main idea and Graduatejobsouth is quite cool - but we won't miss out as the web moves very fast.

There's probably been 2 big search ideas within the last 12 months.. Like I said - Fast!

DotNetWebs

17th July 2010, 19:01

There is a good article on Tech Crunch today:

How Social Media Drives New Business: Six Case Studies (http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/17/how-social-media-drives-new-business-six-case-studies/)

Regards

Dotty

parkendboy

17th July 2010, 19:03

Hate It :mad:

JamesM

18th July 2010, 13:43

A study by ExactTarget shows that now 69% of Facebook users and 68% of Twitter members will follow a company brand on social networks, so yep it's worth it.

gogul2k

18th July 2010, 15:47

The platform you use is irrelevant.

Measuring the worth of using any kind of social media for your business whether it's Twitter or UK Business Forums depends on being genuine and building relationships with the right demographic.

The real question is, how are you going to make using Twitter worth the effort?

eventdomain

18th July 2010, 16:45

The real question is, how are you going to make using Twitter worth the effort?

Ofcourse - this social stuff requires so much posting and interaction for it to pay off, you'll spend your life doing it - for little gain. There's an art to getting results, trouble is only the few know how to do this and the majority will fail at it.

mattsaw

19th July 2010, 08:07

Oh the next big thing has been done already. There's quite a few large companies inventing stuff for the web, then you have the entrepreneurs ofcourse......

So there is lots happening, but it takes about 2 years for the projects to hit the headlines. Notgoingtouni was the last main idea and Graduatejobsouth is quite cool - but we won't miss out as the web moves very fast.

There's probably been 2 big search ideas within the last 12 months.. Like I said - Fast!

Are you seriously trying to tell anyone that those two sites are 'the next big thing?'

They're just a couple of run-of-the-mill template jobs sites that have been done a million times before.