Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters, or the very length of this sentence, including all punctuation and spaces. The messages are public and you decide what sort of messages you want to receive. You can send and receive Twitter messages or ‘tweets’ from your computer or mobile phone.

Why I love Twitter

Twitter is amazing for getting quick simple information to a lot of people.  When I want to send a message, thousands of people receive  the message.  I have 140 characters to let them know about future plans, current promotions or remind them of recent releases.  Within minutes those that receive the message can respond by sending their feedback or passing the info onto their friends – Twitter makes it possible to enable your customers to become your promoters and it didn’t cost one cent!  What a fantastic marketing tool.

Why I hate Twitter

Twitter is hard work.  While it’s true that it’s free to get the message out to a massive crowd of customers or potential customers, you still have to convince them to ‘follow you’, or sign up to receive your messages.  In order for that to happen, you need to have something great to say.  Twitter is no different than the rest of marketing, there is great potential, but how do you harness that and make it work for your store?

This is the greatest frustration of Twitter, many businesses expect Twitter, to be ‘the thing’ that will attract the masses to their store.  When in fact, this is incredibly rare, the same level of rare as winning the lottery.

Why I still love Twitter

If you survived reading through the ‘hating’ part, you’ve done well.  Now for the secret of success with Twitter.  Like all other forms of social networking for businesses, Twitter can’t be seen as a silver bullet or the latest way to make it big.  Rather, it should be seen as an incredible (free) tool to connect with your customers on a relational level.  If you’re able to have a bit of fun with it, you can provide people with a chance to see that your store is a great destination to visit, because you’re there.  If social networking simply is not your cup of tea, then leave it alone and spend your time in other areas better suited to your strengths.

Keep in mind, what really makes social networking successful is, as the name suggests – it’s mainly social, with a bit of work.