What’s Your 140 Character Pitch?
Much has been made in the blogosphere about using Twitter for business. Twitter, you will recall, is a micro-blogging site that limits your posts to 140 characters. People use it for anything from telling everyone what they ate for lunch to asking for advice to pointing people to interesting websites. Rich Brooks and Lynelle Wilson, both fellow MaineBusiness bloggers, have both written extensively on the topic.
I admit it. On this, I was a slow adopter. I just started using twitter a couple of weeks ago, even though I signed up long before that. I just didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to constantly update everyone on themselves? Sounded a bit too narcissistic to me. My brother and business partner jumped into twitter with both feet in August. When we started getting customers as a direct result, I finally figured it out. We were in the midst of another paradigm shift in internet marketing.
This article in Wired Magazine says that blogs are ’so 2004.’ That’s because back in 2004, blogs were an even playing field. Anyone could write one, and your content could be found by the search engines fairly easily. Nowadays, professional blogging sites like Huffington post have pushed aside the little guy. Their content is updated many times per day, snuffing out those little once-a-week posters. This concept is true across blogging types- personal, political, and business. Twitter, with its 140 character limit, once again puts everyone on an even playing field.
John Jantsch, a respected marketing blogger, wrote a blog (and subsequent ebook) about internet marketing. In the article, he uses Maslow’s Hierarchy of human nature and puts in a business’ “internet marketing” needs. On the bottom of the triangle is blogging, while micro-blogging, like twitter, is placed at the top. He claims that it wont make sense to use social sites unless you are blogging, and that mirco-blogging will only make sense to the most advanced social-media small business owners.
With respect to John’s accomplishments in internet marketing, he is wrong on this. This restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, doesn’t blog or anything- they don’t even have a website- but they have successfully used twitter to market themselves on the Internet. The beauty of the shift to micro-blogging is that you don’t need to know how to do anything else. Internet Marketing cannot be compared to a triangle. It is circular, and how much of the circle you use for any given avenue of exposure will depend on your social media strategy.
I’m not ready to give up blogging just yet. I enjoy writing, and I still like to produce valuable, varied content for visitors to my website. But I do intend to increase my usage on twitter, and have a more focused social media strategy.
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6 Responses to “What’s Your 140 Character Pitch?”
Hi,
I think that having a blog or a website and market it on twitter depends on you need. If you offer services or products through your blog then I think you have to keep it. Even if you don’t offer a direct services you still should keep your blog because you can interact faster with your clients and get their feedback.
By Toma Bonciu on Nov 15, 2008
Thanks for the comment Toma. I definitely agree with you. It’s probably not time to throw out the blog for people running blogs already. I think, though, that people shouldn’t be afraid to jump into twitter just because they don’t have a blog or a website. Maybe they can start with Twitter and expand from there.
~Mike
By Mike on Nov 17, 2008
I agree what twitter can be used to promote a business even if you don’t have a blog. But, I do have a couple of disagreements. Wired was wrong in their premise that blogging is dead and that it won’t work. And what was interesting about Wired and their efforts to tell us blogging was so 2004, they were using a blog to try to convince us to close our blogs down.
The only thing Wired did right in their post was to create a huge amount of buzz and traffic for themselves to their blog. Blogging is far from dead and if a business uses blogging right, it can add an huge amount of kick to the overall marketing plan of that business.
A blog is something you grow and own. Twitter is a tool you use to grow your other marketing efforts and to increase your influence on the web. I would venture to guess that the business you mentioned who doesn’t have a blog or website might actually see an overall increase in their influence if they did. And now would be a great time to do so, especially when you consider the fact they have established themselves as a place to go without it.
Now would be a good time for them to ride the wave if you will and take advantage of the exposure they have received just from twitter.
Yes you can have a successful social media campaign with just twitter. However you can have an even large influence if you use twitter as a tool to grow a blog/website and in turn grow you business.
By Grant Griffiths on Nov 17, 2008
I love blogging, but have definitely found Twitter to be a huge boost to my business. People throw out quick comments that might never make it to their blog, it’s a great source of reading material and for people who are really involved it it a showcase for their personality and interests.
By Laurie/HaloSecretarial on Nov 17, 2008
Thanks for the comments. Clearly, the wired article was over the top. Blogging is still a major lifeblood of the Internet. I will, however, come back to my point that people can jump into twitter with little or no experience. Many businesses will benefit from a blog, but some will not. It all depends on your overall social media strategy. For example, would a busy restaurant owner benefit from the effort of keeping up with a blog? He or she may better connect with people via the simplicity and level playing field of Twitter.
By Mike on Nov 17, 2008
I did the same thing - signed up for Twitter and let it sit for a long time because I thought it was about what you were eating for lunch. Until I read Pam Slim’s newsletter where she linked to her pal Havi talking about Twitter as a rich network of smart, thoughtful people tweeting about their work. I rediscovered Twitter and have been hooked ever since.
Great point about Twitter being an entirely different point of access rather than a step above blogging. I found that interacting on Twitter gave me the courage to do more with my regular blog because microblogging is less intimidating and it’s much easier to build a following on Twitter and get instant feedback.
By Chris Quick on Nov 17, 2008