Trouble With Twitter

If you have been around the site you know that we use Twitter on occasion. After using twitter for a while now, I am concerned that I am going to come to the conclusion like so many other have that Twitter is relatively useless. I have used Twitter both personally and as a business utility. The trouble with Twitter is it seems that the primary “active” users of Twitter are other self-promoting businesses. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to self-promotion, be it by social networking or other means of advertising. I just have to ask myself are my efforts wasted on Twitter? Did anyone actually see my latest update?

Some recent studies on Twitter and people who tweet point out that over 40% of all tweets fall into the category of “pointless babble”. Pear Analytics put out a report with these and other interesting findings. Also interesting is that 75% of all tweets come from just 5% of people who tweet. Let’s go even further: it was also reported that about 25% of all tweets are done from bots or with an automated program. On average this 25% posts over 150 posts per day. The study took into consideration that users who had the most followers (5,000 or more) and who posted 50 or less tweets per day. Surprisingly enough (not really) the top users in this category were self promoting businesses, and not only that but their market was helping businesses use social media. Do we see the trouble with Twitter yet?

Let me stop you right there. I don’t think that Twitter is utterly useless and I will continue to use Twitter as a marketing tool. The decision I have to make is how much time is to much time with Twitter? That is the problem with a lot of businesses and myself personally. I have to seriously try and identify the projects or tasks that I need to focus my time on and really put the other aside. I have a tendency of going a million miles an hour in my head and never truly focusing on the important task at hand.

In my opinion, Twitter marketing can still be useful if you use it properly. One good way to use Twitter as a marketing tool is to set it up as an announcement center for your customers. It’s a great way to tell current customers exactly what is going on with your business. It also appears to be effective for running promotions and other temporary projects. One company that I feel using Twitter in a good way is Comcast. They are constantly monitoring Twitter for negative comments regarding Comcast. They have a team dedicated to helping mitigate publicly negative comments about the company or its services, so Tweet badly about them and you will have a representative tweeting you in minutes. Spooky? A little, but I love it! What a proactive approach! they are trying to catch people frustrated before it spreads around or even makes it to the customer support line. At least they seem to take you seriously.

The most interesting statistic I found was that over 50% of Twitter users tweeted once every 74 days. Are we wasting our time? I guess that is for you to decide. I know that I will definitely be focusing more of my time to other on line marketing areas though. I’m sure I will still see you out there on Twitter, becasue let’s face it… It’s still fun.

So go ahead, you know you want to… Follow us on Twitter!
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