Twitter - Marketing Tool Or Waste Of Time?

[Penden]

It can depend on your customer base, but I gotta tell you that within a week of joining twitter and randomly following people who showed up in my relevant searches I've made two sales through twitter. At the same time I joined etsy to provide a professional looking storefront, and soon after I joined a forum type deal that I found out about through the twitter people I was meeting. I have a lot of views on etsy showing me that lots of people have followed my links and/or found me through the etsy search.

It's good not to get TOO personal but at the same time people don't like to think that you are there "just" to sell your stuff. If your posts could just as easily be made by a robot then you are not going about it the right way. They like to see that you are a real person. So I do respond to people in a personal way, like if they say that they are having a bad day, I let them know that I hope they feel better - and I do hope that! But for most of what I post that is not a response to any one, it's about my work like in progress and final product pictures. And I don't just post the link for the sole purpose of expecting them to buy, I ask them for opinions and I really do want their opinions.

It can really depend on what you are selling. If you are selling saddles I think twitter would not work so well. You could sure find lots of people who love horses but what about people who actually HAVE horses? You could have trouble finding people who are actually interested in buying your product rather than just looking at it and wishing they had a horse. (I fall into that later category myself LOL). In contrast the stuff I sell doesn't require that you already have special equipment, just that you have an interest in it. For selling saddles on the internet, you'd probably have to look at specialty forums where everyone owns a farm or something.

Picture your typical customer/the customer you want to sell to. Now picture one or two different kinds of people who are internet-savvy... Do they match your customer base? If so, you might give twitter a shot. My crowd is generally younger or at least internet savvy and they love the celtic knotwork I do.

Hope that helps!

[Bondurant]

Pendon, glad you got a couple sales, thats a good suprise. Whats your user name on Twitter, Im @ar549

[Penden]

Pendon, glad you got a couple sales, thats a good suprise. Whats your user name on Twitter, Im @ar549

The twitter account I've made sales from is nsfw / "adult". If you or anyone else wants it anyway, shoot me a PM

[machinistchest]

I regestered on twitter but haven`t figured out how it works yet.

A customer of mine has posted all his tool chest restorations which feature some of my products on Flicker. It`s a photo sharing site. He claims he`s getting 6-7 hundred veiws a day and nearly 100 thousand in a year on his photostream. We worked out a little skit where I was able to post a linkback to my website, so far I`v recieved 7 visits (2 weeks). Apparently the viewers arn`t reading the comments they`re just looking at the pic`s ...MC

http://www.flickr.co...N08/4585375384/

[UKRay]

It can depend on your customer base, but I gotta tell you that within a week of joining twitter and randomly following people who showed up in my relevant searches I've made two sales through twitter. At the same time I joined etsy to provide a professional looking storefront, and soon after I joined a forum type deal that I found out about through the twitter people I was meeting. I have a lot of views on etsy showing me that lots of people have followed my links and/or found me through the etsy search.

It sounds like what you are saying is that Twitter can be useful but you need to make it part of an overall marketing effort rather than expecting it to work as a stand-alone?

I would agree with this and go further to say that unless you are adding stuff pretty regularly you won't see much benefit from Twitter because your info will be lost in the mass of postings that show up on the average person's twitter page. Imagine a prospect who is following 100 people - how will they find your posting amongst that lot? You have to work hard to make sure your information is somewhere near the top each time they look.

Is there any way of automating Twitter posts?

Ray

[AmandaM]

Twitter is a great tool for some of the reasons mentioned above. It does take time (months) to build a following of current and more importantly, potential customers. I have a slightly different view of the horse people/ non owner example. Some of those folks eventually will have a horse and be in the market for your product. You have already done the groundwork and they will hopefully come to you first when ready to purchase. We call them Prospects rather than Customers. You need to look at that group a little differently and not dismiss just because they won't buy today. People are more apt to buy from someone they feel they have a connection with. Especially if it is expensive and/or custom. Build it into part of your overall plan and remember it's low cost aside from just 5 minutes a day to post.

A great book on the whole subject of social media marketing is "The New Rules of Marketing and PR", by David Meerman Scott, which coves blogging, Twitter and other channels to help your audience find YOU, instead of the other way around. Smart, eh?

A