Ten Ways To Decide If Your Business Should Tweet

What's up with all the Twitter talk at Applebee&39;s? by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Originally published in MediaPost&39;s Social Media Insider

During a late lunch (for me) or an early
dinner (for my wife&39;s grandparents) at Applebee&39;s in Reading, Pa., I
was distracted from figuring out how to eat my riblets when I heard the
conversation inevitably turn to Twitter.

It wasn&39;t the most senior
members at the table who were interested in tweeting — thank goodness,
as that would have made me fall off my chair faster than an Applebee&39;s
Top Shelf Long Island Iced Tea. Instead, my uncle, an optometrist, had
been hearing about Twitter and wondered if he should tweet
professionally.

When I answered Uncle Glenn, I brought up a
number of factors that he should consider when evaluating the service.
I also compared his situation to that of Jeff, my father-in-law, a
plastic surgeon in Dallas. Glenn and Jeff have several things in
common: small businesses in healthcare targeting older-skewing
customers who aren&39;t particularly tech-savvy. There are key differences
though, and those are described below.

Here are ten factors Glenn, Jeff, or anyone else should consider when deciding whether to tweet:

1. Domain squatting:
   Is there any value for you to register your business name or even real
   name (if you own your business or are the face of it) as a Twitter user
   name? I covered this recently, and there are a number of reasons why you should, even if you don&39;t plan to actively use it.

2. Brand mentions: Is
   anyone talking about your actual business already? For a small
   business, this isn&39;t as likely, but you absolutely must check. For this
   search and others discussed here, use Twitter Search at  search.twitter.com.
   While Twitter offers search functionality on its own site, it&39;s only
   available to registered users, and Twitter Search is more robust.

3. Topical mentions:
   Are people on Twitter discussing topics relevant to your business? For
   Glenn, this might mean posts about getting glasses. For Jeff, it might
   be concerns about aging, or about certain products like Botox. These
   signal opportunities where you can respond and be a resource. I once
   tweeted about a friend needing a WordPress programmer; the person who
   responded wasn&39;t following me but was getting alerts for relevant
   terms, and he wound up with the gig.

4. Location mentions: If
   your business is based in or focused on a certain city or region,
   search Twitter to see what people are saying about it. Then use the advanced search
   feature to find posts from people based within a certain area. There
   may be ways to be a resource about your area. You should also run
   location-specific searches for your brands and relevant topics. The
   potential reach also matters; Glenn&39;s target is residents within a
   small radius of Reading (population: 83,000), while Jeff&39;s customers
   live in and beyond the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, home to one-quarter
   of all Texans.

5. Target audience: If there are
   lots of relevant mentions, click the user names to see if they look
   like they could be in your target audience. If the volume of tweets is
   high enough, you&39;ll find a sample of people who are sharing information
   about themselves, whether from their Twitter profiles, the links to
   their sites, or what they&39;re talking about.

6. Competitiveness: How
   cutthroat is your business? Do you need to do anything and everything
   to stay ahead? Twitter could be a competitive advantage, or a necessary
   defensive strategy. Jeff&39;s business is one of those fields where his
   competitors will shamelessly copy whatever he does, from marketing to
   innovative surgical procedures and technologies. Glenn&39;s field is
   toward the other end of the spectrum, where he spends a lot of his time
   sharing what he knows with his peers. Someone like Jeff is thus more
   inclined to use Twitter because they have to, while someone in Glenn&39;s
   situation would use it if they want to.

7. Sales cycle complexity:
   How involved is the purchase decision? For Jeff&39;s business, there&39;s a
   lot of complexity in terms of understanding the procedures and
   technologies involved. Plus, if anything goes wrong, it will often be
   very visible to everyone the customer knows. This means Jeff must
   invest a great deal of energy in making prospective customers feel
   comfortable with him and his business. With Glenn, trust is no less
   important, but his customers don&39;t need to conduct as much research
   online; he&39;ll wind up earning most customers&39; trust in person.

8. Purchase frequency: This
   can vary considerably for both Glenn and Jeff. For Jeff, many customers
   need to return regularly for maintenance. Glenn, meanwhile, has an
   opportunity to provide services for the whole family, from eye exams to
   glasses. How valuable is it to stay top of mind?

9. Acquisition vs. retention: If
   most of your business comes from existing customers, then just ask them
   if they use Twitter and if they&39;d want to keep in touch with you that
   way. If you&39;re continually prospecting, then you need to review these
   other factors.

10. Bandwidth and resources: Even
    if your target audience is on Twitter and there are a million reasons
    to connect with customers there, do you work with anyone who
    understands Twitter well enough to participate, or can you afford to
    pay someone else to train you or run your Twitter program?

That&39;s the long answer. The short answer is, "Are your target customers
on Twitter, and do you have the resources to reach them?"

Jeff
gave these factors a lot of thought and is already tweeting away, even
if he&39;s still figuring out the best way to use it (like most everyone
else). Glenn will probably hold off unless his Twitter research
uncovers surprising results. Both can periodically return to this guide
to assess whether Twitter has the potential to help them grow their
businesses. Even if it&39;s a little challenging to understand, it&39;s all
much easier than figuring out how to eat a riblet.