The real value of Twitter

Last week thousands of Iranians used Twitter to organize demonstrations, Tech Crunch founder Mike Arrington announced Twitter is his third highest traffic source and Dell reported $US3 million dollars in sales through Twitter.

Over the last week you probably read more than three articles telling you either how Twitter was the greatest thing ever or the pending Twitpocalypse was going to destroy Facebook, Blogs and the mass media.

Stripped of all the hype Twitter is a simple tool, designed to send short, succinct messages between people who value each other’s views and experiences. You have 140 characters to send a statement to everyone who cares to read your comments.

The value in Twitter comes in three ways: who you follow, who follows you, and what you tweet.

From a business point of view, it gives you a direct link to your customers and fans and gives them the opportunity to spread good news about your business. You can think of it being a mini newsletter that people can pass around.

At the same time, you listen to what people are saying about your business and products.

The problem with Twitter is the number of mindless dills posting rubbish, but one man’s trash is another’s gold.

My favourite example is pointless twitterers telling the world about shampooing their cats, but that’s not fair. I’ve never shampooed a cat, so I have no idea if the feline grooming business is big or not.

It may well be there’s a huge cat shampooing market waiting to be tapped and millions of cashed up customers are begging for a twitter hash tag on the topic.

Who knows? It could be true in your industry too.

To use it, just go to the Twitter site and register a name. You may want to use your business name or one of the products you’re best known for – just watch out for trademark issues.

The beauty of Dell’s $US3 million in revenues from Twitter sales is that the Twitter account has cost them nothing but the time of one of their marketing people.

Twitter isn’t going to replace Facebook or Google any more than it’s going to replace direct mail or the local classifieds. It’s simply a different channel to get your message across.

So give it go, follow some interesting people and post a few of your own opinions and business offers. You never know, you might beat Dell’s $US3 million in Twitter sales.

Paul Wallbank is a speaker, writer and broadcaster on technology and business. He grew PC Rescue into a national IT company and set up the IT Queries website. Paul has a regular ABC spot on technology matters.

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