You are not alone if you have asked yourself whether or not using Twitter for business is worth it. When twitter first came out, some people thought it was just for letting people know what you had for breakfast. It got a bad rap and is still one of the more misunderstood social networks.
Over time, Twitter has become part of major political upheavals, is used by every major media outlet and is one of the top tools for serious digital marketers.
To be honest, it took me a really long time to get fully on board. Now that organic search engine optimization is so difficult and everyone is doing content marketing, you need all the help you can get to promote your content.
Why use Twitter for business on a daily basis and give it more than casual attention? These experts reveal how they really feel about using Twitter for business and personal use. There is not 1% of hesitation in these words.
- Michael Hyatt who has 500k a month unique visitors to his blog and over 530,000 email subscribers isn’t just a fan of Twitter, it is clearly a social media tool that he cannot live without.
“Twitter is one of key tools in my platform toolbox. It represents about 21 percent of my blog referral traffic. In terms of the return, I don’t know of a better investment.
Currently, I have more than 110,000 followers on Twitter. According to TwitterCounter and RetweetRank:
I am adding 73 new followers per day.I am re-tweeted 260 times per day.My total daily reach is 418,908.Yet, I spend less than thirty minutes a day on Twitter. I don’t know where else I could impact that many people with so little effort.” Michael Hyatt | @ michaelhyatt - Neil Patel has a habit of growing blogs like the ones for his companies Crazy Egg and Kiss Metrics to over 100k visitors a month. He puts Twitter before even making a blog…
“Why do you think my companies have done so well from a traffic generation perspective? It’s because I’ve created a popular blog for each of my companies, right?
Although that is correct, it’s not where we started our traffic acquisition. The very first piece of social media real estate that I create for any business I start isn’t a blog. It’s actually a Twitter profile.” - Rand Fishkin of Moz – a true SEO guru – is onboard 100% and has Twitter tools like Followerwonk in his software packages.
“Twitter is really a platform for influencing, growing influence, gaining that thought leadership and authority” @randfish moz.com - Dan Zarrella from HubSpot and writing for CopyBlogger says:
“Twitter is a force that any serious web publisher needs to reckon with in order to gain maximum exposure for content.” Dan Zarrella @danzarrella - Brian Clark of Copyblogger says without Twitter you may be a tree falling in a forest that no one hears.
“Twitter has become the place for sharing content links. If your content catches attention on Twitter and spreads, suddenly you’re getting significant traffic from people who may have never visited your site before.
But don’t forget to share other people’s quality content on Twitter. This helps you build up a Twitter audience that values your editorial judgment, which in turns helps you when you have something of your own to share.
In both cases, what you share on Twitter is not just about the actual value of the content. It’s also about whether the content gets viewed and appreciated in the first place.” - Guy Kawasaki, formerly the chief evangelist of Apple as well as author of
The Art of Social Media, The Art of the Start, APE and nine other books, doesn’t hold back what he really thinks:“With some effort, you may come to view Twitter as I do: the best new marketing twool of this century. Tweet long and prosper.” - Mark Schaefer, author of The Tao of Twitter, likens Twitter to old school networking:“And the best approach to using Twitter is personal networking”.
When he talks to clients, he asks them,
“Are you the type of business that can benefit from going to a Chamber of Commerce meeting or a local networking meeting?” If you are, then yours is the right kind of business to be on Twitter.”
And he goes on to tout it as a must do before spending all your effort blogging:
“If you are a new blogger, you should probably spend more time developing an audience than creating your content.
Here are three easy but overlooked tactics you can use to build an audience on Twitter, which is arguably the best platform for this.”
7 Twitter experts? Haha, more like 7 million…
In looking for people sharing the benefits of Twitter for business, I could have been at it for a years. There is no end to top bloggers and marketers having great things to say about Twitter.
Here are a few extras:
Ishita Ganguly writes for Social Media Examiner, which is the most well know social media blog. They have a huge amount of praise for and how to’s on Twitter marketing and she says:
“Twitter is a great platform for establishing yourself, growing an audience and making important connections.” Ishita Ganguly on Twitter from Social Media Examiner @GangulyIs
Pamela Vaughan from HubSpot, reveals a few nice stats to back up why Twitter is so powerful.
“Twitter can help you promote your content, provide helpful customer service, generate leads and customers, and much more. In fact, companies that use Twitter generate 2x more leads than those that don’t, and 42% of companies that use Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer through it .” Pamela Vaughan | @pamelump
Blog post promotion experts write about it constantly like it’s one of their children:
“Twitter – This is one of the best sites for getting content to go viral. Twitter is my lifeblood.” Hank Klinger | @Hankwklinger
It’s a go to marketing tool:
“Twitter is a hot spot for sharing and spreading great content. It’s one of the first places that we share our latest blog posts.” Kim Roach of buzzblogger.com | @buzzblogger
Looking for more Twitter quotes
I may come back to this and add more later. Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin and Chris Brogan are just few I would like quotes from about using Twitter for business. Please reach out to me on Twitter or leave quotes in the comments below.
Why use Twitter for business?
If ranking in Google is important to you then you need a blog. That blog needs longtail keywords but it also needs promotion. Without Twitter, you are losing out on a substantial amount of sharing opportunities.
Having a social following makes you an authority to some degree. We all like to see large numbers of followers listed by the top experts. Social proof is a powerful thing that can help customers trust you.
Twitter power is one of the important factors that tools like Klout, Kred and Peer Index use to judge your social influence. Not that these tools are the be-all and end-all of authority but it is certainly relevant that you will be hard-pressed to get a high score with no Twitter account.
Another popular tool that gives you a grade on your marketing is marketing.grader.com from HubSpot. Here is what it looks like when you don’t have a Twitter account – or any other social media set up:
As it says right in the marketing grader tool, companies with even just 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer.
Getting started with Twitter
Getting started is very easy and using Buffer is a great way to build up a Twitter following. For businesses and their staff looking to be seen as thought leaders, it all starts with sharing other people’s content and sprinkling in your own.
I am humbled by the knowledge of these Twitter experts and inspired to take it up a notch myself, before Twitter throttles back your organic reach like Facebook did.
If you’re still on the fence, consider the fact that there are almost no famous marketing experts or journalists not on Twitter… Are you willing to be one of those few?
Follow me on Twitter here:
@McDougallJohnD