Six months ago many people let alone businesses would be forgiven for not knowing what Twitter was. Those who used it regularly were seen as a hardcore group of tech geeks and bloggers who realized its potential early on quickly adopting it to get their message out instantly rather than writing full length blogs.
Since then a number of high profile celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon and now it seems that the world is tweeting out of the trees. Many argue that it is just another web 2.0 way of feeding into peoples narcissism and twittering about inane things such as what they had for breakfast.
But lately there have been a number of blue chip companies most notably CNN and Dell that have realized its potential and have jumped into the mix and are tweeting to the masses. The recent race to see who would be first between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to reach a million followers stirred up this frenzy to a fever pitch.
Australia has recently seen a 1000% rise in the number of users visiting Twitter in recent months and this seems to be right across the board. Whether or not you are a large company with a strong brand image or an entrepreneur with a niche product there are a number of reasons why you should hop on board.
- Network with an unlimited number of people
- Build your reputation in your own industry
- It isn’t based on pre-existing friendships
- Unlimited source of referrals
- Integrates with other social media such as Facebook
- Thousands of Twitter Apps
- You can tweet from a cell phone / mobile
- Search for contacts based on industry segment and location
- Easy to stop ‘following’ people
- Live search function keeps up speed with the latest trends
- It’s free and easy to use
The most important thing to bear in mind for any business is that social media / micro blogging sites such as Twitter are all about networking on not actually hard selling your product. Once you get your head around the fact that it is a tool to build relationships with others and not a free form of advertising the potential can be phenomenal. Its all about adding value so get tweeting.
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