In our last blog, Facebook: A Growing Asset for Business Owners, we discussed Facebook’s increasing value to business owners. Naturally, this is especially true for ecommerce users, such as our Yahoo storefront clients. While we noted that Facebook has over 350 million active users, it is important to add that other social media programs are quickly gaining traction as well.
Business owners who are already using or considering using Facebook to interact with and grow their online clientele should also think about using Twitter.
According to Wikipedia, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140¬†characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide.”
It’s difficult to say exactly how popular Twitter is or how many active users¬† are using the service because Twitter hasn’t been diligent in releasing those figures. However, TwitDir, is a user directory that as of December 12, 2009 points to over 5.3 million users, compared to the 1 million plus mentioned back in the March, 2008 reports.
What can be said for certain is that business owners are attracting significant attention from their twitter followers, especially when “tweets” are newsworthy and well managed. This obviously means better conversion rates.
While Twitter might only be Facebook’s loquacious little sister right now, Facebook has not made an attempt to quiet her down. In fact, Facebook is¬†holding her hand during what seems to be a prolonged and steadily increasing growth spurt: Facebook users can now sync their accounts with Twitter, which means Facebook posts will automatically be posted as tweets as well.
Now Facebook fans can more conveniently become Twitter followers and vice versa. That’s smart synergy every business owner should be thinking about.
Twitter, like Facebook, is free. But as we have mentioned before, social media management takes serious strategic planning and constant legwork to be successful.¬† For businesses owners who simply don’t have the time or skill set available,¬†contact FastPivot.com to discuss your social media goals.
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