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Twitter … so what?

What practical use is Twitter?

Are its detractors correct in saying it’s a fad and a completely pointless waste of time? Perhaps. We have been using Twitter at Elevate CA for the past year – but in truth, our presence is mostly about being seen to embrace technology. Of course Twitter does drive plenty of traffic to our web site – in fact it is our single largest referrer. And we have picked up some good work from Twitter – but probably no more than if we had put in the same effort elsewhere.

I’m really not sure where this whole Twitter phenomenon is heading. Will it be past its peak in 12 months and populated only by late adoptors and armies of automated bots? Or will it continue to grow exponentially and become more entrenched as a mainstream communication tool? I can’t even guess the answers – but I do keep half an eye on the Twitter story as it evolves.

Here’s a story which probably adds nothing to the big Twitter question of “So What?” It gives a glimpse of the power of Twitter – but it gives no clues as to how that might be harnessed. I recently discovered TwitterScore >>> which ranks individual Twitter users according to some algorthym. And I soon noticed Lisa Ethridge, an Auckland Design student at Unitec who suddenly came from nowhere to become the 4th ranked Twitter user in New Zealand – with over 20,000 followers.

As an aside (maybe I should say “as a boast”), Elevate CA is ranked by TwitterScore >>> as New Zealand’s number 19 Twitter user with a community of 7,500 followers.

Back to Lisa – so how did she amass 20,000 followers from around the world in a very short time? It turns out the answer was as much a surprise to her as it was to anyone else – as you can see from this interview with Californian internet celebrity Leo Laporte.

Lisa opened her Twitter account in March – and posted her first tweet which went something like “I hate technology”. Fairly benign, but by that time she had just 3 people following her so she wasn’t out to impress.
At the same time, the hosts of popular US show “This Week in Tech” – Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose – decided to conduct a social experiment and encourage their listeners to follow a random Twitter user en masse. Kevin Rose searched on the random phrase “I hate technology” – and came up with Aucklander Lisa Ethridge’s brand new twitter account, which he proceeded to urge his viewers to follow.

Within minutes, Lisa Ethridge had thousands of people following her on Twitter – and had become an instant minor Twiter celebrity. She probably slept through it all initially – blissfully unaware. But as she had her “e-mail notifications” option ticked, Twitter sent her an e-mail every time someone new followed her. Imagine her surprise waking up in the morning to an inbox jammed with thousands more messages than her e-mail account would allow – and many thousands of geeks and tech folk watching her every move on Twitter!

So what? Who cares?

Well I don’t know, but I guess that’s up to Lisa. She now has an opportunity to say something meaningful (no pressure, Lisa) – and to be heard by the community of 20,000 people following her online.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this – as well as those bigger unanswered questions relating to Twitter itself: Like “So what?” and “Who cares?”

Social Media for Business

Here’s a summary of my presentation at from yesterday’s Business Owners Forum. I’m no social media expert – but I do use Twitter, Facebook and blogs to generate interest in two businesses – one is here at Elevate CA, and the other is BrightMind LABS, a business that develops psychological tools wrapped in computer games for kids with mental health issues. Elevate CA sells services, and BrightMind LABS sells products online. We have had a mixed experience with using social media tools to drive leads and sales, and that’s what I’m going to discuss here.

Twitter
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter as almost pointless, and a complete time waster, right?

Perhaps wrong.

Consider Dell, who have a successful Twitter presence. Dell posts daily specials promoted only through Twitter – and has nearly 800,000 followers resulting in several $millions in additional sales solely from its Twitter community. This is from one person sitting at a computer manning the Twitter account at Dell head office in Texas.

It’s important to remember that Twitter is intended primarily for people rather than businesses. So, as your business makes its way onto Twitter, you should endeavour to look and act like a human! As a business owner, this opportunity to personify your brand is a great platform to develop a relationship between your clients and your business.

On the subject of Twitter bringing a human face to brands, here’s an interesting story:

Back in July, Australian marketing company Razorfish performed a Twitter experiment with the Pepsi and Coke . The goal of the experiment was to get arch rivals Pepsi and Coke to follow each other. Razorfish posted this tweet:

“To end an old war: Dear @pepsi and @cocacola, why not follow each other on Twitter and be friends”

The results were interesting. Hundreds of people started retweeting the message and within eighteen hours both Coke and Pepsi had exchanged pleasantries online.

Check out the full story on the Razorfish blog here.

So much for Dell, Coke and Pepsi – how about our more humble experiences with Twitter?

At last count this morning, ElevateCA had 2,607 followers on Twitter – many of whom are business owners in our target market of Whangarei, Northland and Auckland. I also pulled out our website referral stats this afternoon from Google Analytics. In the past week, we have had 119 unique visitors referred to this site from various other websites. Interestingly a huge 99 visits were referred from Twitter. Compare that with just 4 visits referred from our online yellow pages listing, and just three from finda.co.nz where we are also listed.

So how do you motivate people to click through and visit your web site from Twitter?

There are probably many ways of doing this, but what we do is write something short (must be less than 140 characters) on Twitter that captures attention – and then provide a link through to our blog which expands on the subject matter. Here’s an example.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this tweet referring to an East European directory listing scam which almost caught us out – I used 94 characters out of the 140 available:

“Looking for quality inbound links? WARNING: Beware the World Business Guide! http://bit.ly/R4glE”

The URL at the end of the message (http://bit.ly/R4glE) takes you through to our blog post which exapnds on the tale – and where of course we are not limited by wordcount in telling the story.

To get a shortened URL for your blog or web page – so you don’t use scarce characters by having to type a long web address in full – visit www.shorturl.com where you can shorten a long web address for Twitter. It’s free and easy.

Every time we post a tweet linking back to the web site, we get an immediate decent spike in on-line traffic referred from twitter.

Nice. And it takes very little time or effort.

Facebook
Facebook is for kids, right?

Correct – but now it is also for businesses.

From earlier this year, one has been able to create business pages on Facebook. The good news is that like Twitter, these are free. These pages can give your business an identity on Facebook which can strengthen your brand. Current or potential customers can become fans of your page and by doing so they receive the updates that you post to your page. One of the powerful things about Facebook pages is that every time a person becomes a fan of your page, all of their Facebook contacts see that they have become a fan. This often attracts other followers as well as adding to the buzz around your business.

You can use your Facebook page to not only share your company information, but you can also use it to post photos, videos, applications and messages. Any activity that you perform on your Facebook Page is then broadcast into the mini-feeds of your followers. Of course you do need to keep it interesting, as every fan is only one click away from disengaging themselves from your page!

So does Facebook actually work for businesses?

Our experiences say the answer is both yes and no.

Back in April – on the same day – I set up two Facebook pages – one for Brightmind LABS, and the other for ElevateCA.

The BrightMind LABS Facebook page now has over 1,000 followers – all of whom receive our regular updates and many actively contribute to the page. I put plenty of links back to the BrightMind LABS web site on the page, and a lot of people click through, and also frequent the BrightMind LABS website where they can potentially purchase on-line.

One Thousand engaged followers, I that’s better than I expected from the “toe in the water” Facebook Page experiment for BrightMind LABS.

So what about Elevate CA – how many Facebook followers do you think we might have?

I’ll tell you – just TEN!

The Elevate CA directors are three of them. And Rebecca’s relatives make up the other seven. So we have written Facebook off as a dismal failure for ElevateCA.

Facebook doesn’t work for all businesses.

So what have we learned?

Get where the audience is … don’t expect them to come to you cold. Its easier and cheaper to capture your audience where they already are rather than trying to motivate people to visit someplace they don’t already go.

Once you have engaged your audience on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Linkedin or wherever, it’s much easier to entice them to make that one more click through to your blog or web site.

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.

The Art of Networking

This will be the last Business Owners Forum event for 2009 – and we have brought the date forward from the usual third Thursday of the month to avoid the worst (and the best!) of the silly season. The December Business Owners’ Forum will feature a panel discussion on “The Art of Networking”.

This event will be hosted at the ElevateCA offices on 3 December from 5:30pm (sharp) to 7:00pm.

As always with BOF events, discussion will be driven by those who attend on the night – and the panelists will keep things moving along quickly. This time we have three great panelists, and here’s what you can expect to be covered over the hour and a half:

Fraser Hurrell, a director of ElevateCA Limited will talk about his experience with using social media tools such as twitter, facebook and blogs to drive leads and sales. He has some good practical advice from the coalface on how to get results networking online without letting these tools become couterproductive and consume your time.

Geoff Grigg didn’t follow the more usual banker’s career path from the bottom up through the ranks – he joined the BNZ as a Business Relationship Manager without the benefit of a banking network built up over the years. Luckily Geoff’s past life as a Sales Manager meant that he knew exactly how to build his business network from scratch. Geoff will share some insights and practical tips from this journey.

Sarah Lochead-MacMillan, author of “The Naked Networker” says that entering a networking event for the first time can generate the equivalent feelings as attempting to socialise naked. She will give some tools and techniques to get past these feelings – and enable you to form and drive a sustainable network. *Spoiler: There will be no naked networking at this event*.

Format is casual over pizza, beer and wine – and Business Owners Forums are always lively events! These events are targeted to owners of businesses with $1 million turnover and more.

Business Owners Forums are supported by ElevateCA Limited, BNZ, The Bottom Line Expense Reduction, The ICEHOUSE and Webb Ross Lawyers.

The ethos of the Business Owners’ Forum supporters is to give back to the business communities which support us. In line with this ethos, Business Owners’ Forum events are always free of charge.

If you would like to be invited to this event, please contact ElevateCA.

Twitter Suspension

Twitter is a great tool for driving traffic to your web site or blog. We started using Twitter in the early days of ElevateCA, and since then have amassed around 700 followers – largely from Auckland and Northland. Great for building our brand locally. Once or twice a week one of us has a random unknown person saying “hey, I follow you on Twitter” or something similar. And we have even picked up a couple of good clients from Twitter. Nice. But then last week a notice like this popped up on our Twitter account for all the world (or at least for all our followers) to see. [Read more…]