Could Twitter work for you and your business? There are a number of considerations. Here are four good reasons to be on Twitter. If they make sense for you, then that’s where you should be:
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Use Twitter to connect with the media. Because I’m so active on Twitter, journalists tend to ask me for comment – not necessarily because I’m the most knowledgeable, but because I’m there.
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Get your product known by influencers. This is where you’d look to get your product into the hands of bloggers and other influencers who can spread the word about it. Spending time on Twitter means getting to know who’s there, and understanding who to target your product at.
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Understand what people who influence opinion are talking about. If you want to connect with the media and influencers, it’s useful to get to know them. The more you understand what interests them, the more successfully you can target the people who can spread the word about what you do.
- Gain real time insight into what South Africans are thinking, feeling and doing. I’ve always described Twitter as a dipstick into the zeitgeist, and this is true: if you follow a range of South Africans, you’ll soon get a good sense of what we’re interested in at any point in time. This is incredibly useful real time research. While it won’t replace in-depth studies, it’s an excellent way to gain insight into what the market is thinking and doing.
Besides its usefulness, Twitter is also inherently interesting. It’s an excellent content aggregator, and superb for blow-by-blow accounts of news events by the journalists covering them. If you want to know what’s going on in the world, Twitter is the first place to find out. A word of caution though: Twitter does require a level of commitment. If you’re never there, you’ll never benefit from it. But if you get involved and get known, you’ll almost certainly see the benefits.
