Shame on You: Twitter CAN be a Sales Tool
I think two things are shameful right now in social media:
1. Everyone is trying to define or limit Twitter- Twitter is for this or that or should be used in this way and not that. You should have this kind of following:follower ratio. Blah blah blah.
Here's a prime example of a statement that's clearly false: "Twitter is not a sales channel"
- Dell has sold $500,000 of hardware using Twitter (from discounts/specials), and
- Other people are doing more modest things like selling t-shirts.
2. People are settling for and even justifying the use of engagement metrics instead of ROI metrics.
If your goal is branding exclusively, fine- maybe I can accept that. But why not still try to find a way to track your results?
If you're responsible for the bottom line, don't give social media a pass on ROI metrics.
If you come from a PR background and haven't dealt with ROI metrics much, don't use that as an excuse not to learn to use them.
What Twitter is For? Ridiculous.
I was wondering why I spent 30 minutes looking for proof that Twitter can be used as a sales channel. I think it's because I intuit that Twitter can be powerful for a lot of applications... as a communications tool, an engagement tool, a sales tool, a networking tool, to push news feeds... who knows what else.
To me, saying "Twitter is for this or that" would be like in, the early days of the telephone, saying "the telephone isn't for sales" or "the telephone is just for meaningless chatter"- you can't measure it on ROI". Even to say "Twitter favors women" is near-sighted.
Come on!
And by the way, anyone can answer questions like "Can you sell stuff on Twitter?" for themselves with Summize: for example: http://summize.com/search?q
The reason Twitter works for sales is, not only is it a communications tool just like a phone or email, but also you can use it to find customers at point of need.
Here are is some amplification of that:
- http://www.smstextnews.com
/2008/04/using_twitter_as_a _real_time_business_sales _marketing_service.html - http://www.mediaphilosopher
.com/2008/05/06/online-expressi ons-of-the-point-of-need
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I just think if you are going to post an affiliate link selling something... just be considerate and disclose it..
I know 140 characters isn't a lot to work with, but I just find it rude not to disclose it. Just my humble opinion:)
You had me with "-soupy". :)
I think you're absolutely right. I keep getting into arguments with people about "what Twitter is FOR", and now I have a well-spoken post to link them to that supports my side of the debate!
Brian, if you don't mind a quick question - why do you think not disclosing that I'm posting an affiliate link is inconsiderate? I get the impression that the idea is that you (generic "you" here) want people to promote things based on their merits and not on financial interest, but in this environment, why would you get a financial interest in something without believing in its merits?
@ Chris
Well, it's like this. I am following most of me people on Twitter due to the fact that they are Black Ink Project members (http://www.theblackinkproject.com).
Now I don't know these people very well, but have no problem following them if we can help each other in our travels of learning to become better affiliates.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have come to find a few people that I know post "relevant" links on twitter (Brian Carter) that I have no question about following the link. Yet others, that don't add any "value" to twitter and only post spam links and never post anything conversational. I guess thats where I'm coming from on this.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for linking to my post about listening for the point of need.
I like the phone analogy. It sounds so obvious today, but I suspect that it wasn't obvious in the early days of telephone adoption that it would become a significant tool for conducting business (sales, customer support, etc).
It is the same with social media and micro media like twitter. An outsider might assume it is just meaningless chatter until more of these great examples start to surface where companies are effectively selling and supporting customers using tools like Twitter, blogs, etc.
Marcel
Great post Brian. Really useful information.