small business
Fame is tweetıng
Reaching customers in
a few well-chosen words
By Scott Steinberg
CORPORATE GIANTS SUCH as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and IBM o;en boast marketing budgets comparable to a ;ird World
nation’s gross domestic product. So how’s a
small-business owner to compete?
;e answer: in 140 characters or less.
Just ask the growing number of small-
business owners who are leveraging the power
of social networking service Twitter to reach
thousands of potential customers. “In an econ-
omy like this, small-business owners need to
spread the word e;ciently and a;ordably,” says
Steven Strauss (Twitter address: @SteveStrauss),
author of ;e Small Business Bible (John Wiley
& Sons, 2005). “Social networking is word-of-
mouth advertising for the 21st century … and
that’s the best advertising there is.”
A free micro-blogging service that lets
users share “tweets”—brief text messages less
than 140 characters long that subscribers or
“followers” can read and redistribute—Twitter’s
popularity is booming. With 75 million users
who send more than 50 million instant updates
a day via computer or mobile phone, it’s a clas-
sic case study in frequency and reach.
No surprise, then, that industry leaders
such as Dell (@DellOutlet), Zappos (@Zappos)
and Starbucks (@Starbucks) all use Twitter to
drive direct sales, o;er promotional discounts
and engage shoppers with their brand. But a
legion of scrappy upstarts are also using it to
turbo-charge their businesses.
For example, Tamiko Hargrove, CEO of
New York–based scented-candle-maker Helen
Julia (@helenjuliainc), sends out tweets daily to
200 followers with product reviews, giveaways
and sales promotions. Hargrove says these
tweets have been bringing in eight to 10 new
customers monthly and prompted a 50 percent
increase in the company’s Web site tra;c.
Technology expert and TV/radio host Scott
Steinberg covers all things high tech and social
media related at
www.toptechexpert.com.
TweetMeme: Adds a “retweet” button
to any story on your blog or Web site, allowing users to share it. The more tweets, the
more value the article is perceived to contain, potentially generating massive reader
pass-along.
oneforty: A one-stop shop where
you can go to search, browse and rate
the hottest new Twitter applications,
with an entire section devoted to
business-related apps.
HootSuite: Lets you schedule tweets
to go live at set times, monitor chatter surrounding your brand, balance workflow
Top Twitter apps and services
among a team of contributors and track
clicks and customer engagement.
Co Tweet: Offers an enterprise-level
solution for businesses looking to manage
multiple Twitter accounts, track rising keywords and trends, and delegate the duty of
responding to incoming messages among
numerous individuals.
TweetDeck: A social media browser that
aggregates Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and
LinkedIn updates under one banner, allowing
you to easily organize and keep abreast of
breaking news from myriad sources, plus
share updates among services.—SS
MAY 2010 ;e Costco Connection 21
