Power of Small

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May 21, 2009 | Total views: 37

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Gestures are changing. Wazzup? has become more formal with Twitter’s “What are you doing?”

It feels like the early days of Facebook are back. And no one wants to be the kid at the party who isn’t tweeting. Experts say that Twitter has much greater monetizing power than any other idea on the internet has ever had. Simply because of simplicity! After all, internet tools are becoming platforms to test business ideas.

Twitter was designed to be a micro-blogging platform aiming at individual user to leverage the power of 140 characters and let the world know what (s)he is doing at that very moment. But now it has become another new age communication platform choice for enterprises and businesses. And the concept of “What are you doing?” is fast changing to “What’s in for me?” Essentially, it is an instant message format that allows you to publish in 140 character bursts. It allows anyone to follow you, read your messages, and publicly reply to them. If you choose to follow someone back, you can share your private messages with that someone.

Talk to anyone in marketing these days and they seem to be pondering over the same thing, “How can we gain leverage with Twitter?” Surely, there is nothing wrong when you see Dell’s idea of using Twitter click. Dell is now offering 20-30% discount and other attractive deals on Dell’s products exclusively to the 515,972 people who follow @DellOutlet. No idea how much of these efforts convert into real sales, but the number of followers is definitely increasing.

Starbuck uses Twitter for promotion purposes. Starbucks coupons, CDs, and other merchandise are distributed on first few replies posted on the tweet.

Ford does a variety of things with Twitter, starting from sharing company news, enhancing customer service, and creating interest/fan clubs such as Drive Green, Ford Trucks, Ford Mustang, Ford Racing, etc.

Forrester, Samsung, Kodak, and many other big brands are feeding small bites on Twitter. Now the question is: Should my business also be on Twitter? Should I also follow the crowd? How can I benefit from using Twitter? What should be my idea on Twitter? In fact, there is such abundance of ideas available that now there’s even a contest for winning the Twitter best revenue model.

Gartner has come out with a report explaining the four ways in which organizations are adopting Twitter.

* Channel for marketing and public relations (in extension to their corporate blogs)
* Inside-out approach: Employees enhancing and extending their personal reputation
* Communicate work, projects and ideas
* Outside-in approach: Channel for collecting views and feedback from the outside world

So all you need to decide is that if Twitter can help connect your business with people whom you are trying to hook. Identify the performance parameters, include Twitter in your communication plans, and create information which is useful, insightful, and short to be posted and crisp to be read. Dedicate someone to empower the channel and keep an eye on the response. But while you implement these steps beware that 140 characters are powerful enough to make or mar your business’ image in public.

However, last but not the least, sometimes trying is better than to just think about trying!