Two Thirds of Twitter talk is Twaddle….

This blog was prompted by an article by Fred Attewill in the Metro free newspaper that many Londoners grab on their way down the Tube every day.

I quote “Tweeters admit only 36 per cent of the tweets they receive are of any interest, about 25 per cent are actively disliked and the rest are instantly forgotten. That means 130 million messages a day sent out on Twitter are simply not worth reading”.

I can’t speak for the veracity of Mr Attewill’s research but by any account those are pretty staggering numbers. Basically it means that tweeters are flooding the online world with a load of junk that hardly anybody is interested in. If you use Twitter you may agree (I do). Personally I think this applies as much to business-to-business tweeting as it does to ‘proper’ social tweeting.

The main point of this post is to encourage you (in your business tweeting particularly) to:

a) Only spend some of your precious work time tweeting if you know that your target audience actually wants to receive your tweets (you can ask them via an email or web page poll). You may be surprised (pleasantly or otherwise) at the answers you get. If you carry on tweeting regardless you may be spending a lot of time that you could be devoting to other more productive internet marketing activities (I know some companies that do this, in the mistaken belief that they are going to drive web traffic, build their online customer base etc.).

b) Only tweet when you have something genuinely interesting and worthwhile to say. Your followers will thank you I can guarantee it and you’ll keep them following you for longer.

c) Don’t use your tweets to sell, sell, sell; keep them informative and relevant to what your audience wants to know about and your sales or new business enquiries will benefit.

Can using Twitter as part of your internet marketing mix work? Yes, of course it can, but like everything else you are (or maybe should be doing: Facebook anyone?) it has to address the needs of the most important people of all, i.e. your existing and prospective customers.

So keep your tweets customer-focused and highly topical and relevant!

Thanks for reading as always.

Jeremy