Advertising on twitter, but will it be effective?

The word is out, it’s in beta, it will soon be available, advertising on twitter, but will it

The next big thing? Advertising on Twitter

be effective? Will Small Business owners be flocking to the Twitter equivalent of paying for clicks? Anthonia Akitunde in the article ‘What Twitter sees in small business’ offers this opinion:

smaller firms are likely to be much more aware of the bottom line. “The ultimate success of this platform will depend on the ability for small business to see strong benefit from it,” Faulds adds. “It’s probably not worth much to get a few more followers. But it’s another thing if they can see a measurable sales lift or increases in store traffic around specific promotions.”

Advertising on twitter, but will it be effective?

In the article Antonia gives two real life small business owners thoughts. Danhi, of The Grilled Cheese Truck has 51,000 followers and is enthusiastic. However, with that amount of followers, even a very low percentage of sales due to a ‘tweet’ can mean big business, here’s what Danhi has to say.

Danhi of The Grilled Cheese Truck, who is privy to information still under wraps as one of the business owners Twitter has contacted, disagrees (that twitter is following facebook for revenue generation), saying the service provides invaluable information. “You get access to analytics about the best time to tweet, and when your followers are tweeting, reading and retweeting,” he shares. “You can’t get that anywhere else because it’s their information. It just helps you be a smarter social media person.”

Danhi is already a believer in the power of Twitter to influence sales from personally tracking how and when his tweets from @grlldcheesetruk have brought in more traffic. He says he’s likely to give the promoted products suite a try. “It’s not about the bragging rights of how many followers we have,” Danhi says. “It’s translating that into sales at the truck.”

 

Can Twitter draw in new customers? Mari, is a bit more sceptical

Small businesses are already familiar with using Twitter to engage with their customers. Mari Luangrath, owner of Chicago-based Foiled Cupcakes, a cupcake delivery company, says 90% of leads and word-of-mouth referrals come to her through Twitter. But Luangrath says she wonders if Twitter’s new ad service is overstating its ability to draw new customers. “What’s kind of misleading about the whole thing is that [Twitter claims] you’re going to get automatic followers, automatic revenue, and automatic sales,” Luangrath says. “Which is not the way social media works.” to read the full article click here

 

And just to add further,  Cynthia Boris reports on the new  2012 AT&T* Small Business Technology Poll on usage of social media for business promotion.

None of the social media networks saw a big rise in usage, but LinkedIn still came out on top going from 25% in 2010 to 31% in 2011. Facebook usage was at 44% up from 41% the prior year.

The losers? Twitter was at 19% usage to start and dropped to 18% in 2011. Location-based networks like Foursquare came in at only 9%.view the post here

 

So will small business owners take the plunge and join in paying for advertising on Twitter and will the survey findings, that LinkedIn is gaining ground make a difference?
Advertising on twitter, but will it be effective? Time will tell, but I’m like Mari, looking for new customers, and am more sceptical, there’s already too many places to spend my advertising dollar, and many of them I’m sure don’t bring in an adequate return on investment.