Twitter Time
Twitter Time
By now every social media consulting company is fully aware of the value of a well established Twitter campaign but small business owners are still prone to overlook this veritable gold-mine of marketing expertise. Part of the problem is the perceived limitations of Twitter but as we shall soon see, the company has taken steps to remedy many of these in recent months.
For example, Twitter launched a site redesign last week in yet another effort to compete with heavy-weights like Facebook and Google+. In fact, over the past year, Twitter and Facebook seem intent upon “borrowing” functions from one another blurring the lines between what was first an “information network” (ie Twitter’s original description) and “social graph” (Facebook’s unique descriptor).
Changes to Twitter have been numerous and major; from elimination of the original 140 character limit to the addition of the new “activity feed”, Twitter has started to take on a similar appearance to its larger social media competitors. The most recent change, the new profile page” is a major step toward taking on a central role among big and small business owners alike. Specifically, the new “brands” page is specifically designed with business owners in mind. Customize headers, make specific tweet’s “sticky” or expand tweets to include video or photographic elements…these are just a few of the enhanced functions small business owners will appreciate.
Friend of Friends – One of the great functions that small everyone enjoys about Facebook is now available via Twitter; the ability to find friends based upon connections with others. In the past, Twitter did not fully support the ability to see who is new on your friend list. Thankfully that has finally changed. Search under the “discover” tab to view for yourself.
Of course, the bottom line is whether or not these changes will really add to the bottom line. Apparently big business thinks so. According to recent research, the cost per Twitter follower now averages $2.50 to $4 while the cost per engagement (consisting of clicks, favorites, retweets and @Replies) runs .75 cents to $2.50 each. Minimum budget is $15,000 and a three month commitment for advertisers. With over 100 million users and a 15x impression rate, clearly there is plenty of demand and potential for Twitter to become one of the major players in the social media marketing arena despite increased competition from Facebook and the new Google+ offerings.
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