Twitter… Tweet Tweet Tweet All Day Long

As I have previously mentioned in this blog, Mackey Advisors has been keeping up with the latest and greatest social media trends, most recently Twitter. At first I kept hearing about how great Twitter is and how fun it is to tweet…

Ok, I’ll admit it. At first I wasn’t too sure about this whole ‘tweeting’ thing. Tweeting? Is that like texting? Why would anyone want to read something I tweeted about? Then a month or so ago I attended a social media breakfast event at the Mets Center in Northern Kentucky (where we were encouraged to get on our Facebooks, LinkedIns, and Twitters and were told to type ‘#metscenter’ if we were tweeting during the event). The panelists were so enthusiastic about Twitter I decided that it was time to give it a try. I signed up, made a profile, and tentatively offered my first tweet: ‘Excited to be on Twitter!’. Hey—give me a break. I really was excited! Then I attended a webinar where representatives from the AICPA spoke about their use of Twitter, so I signed up to follow them. And ever since then, my Twitter homepage has been full of tweets from the AICPA letting me know about all kinds of new laws and developments in taxes and accounting.

I’ve been doing my best to keep up with my Twitter; I’m up to almost 20 followers (wow!) and I’ve updated my tweets nine times. Okay, so this part of Twitter is what I’m still working on: the whole ‘stream of consciousness/I can update my Twitter 2576367 times I day if I want to’ idea. I’m still adjusting to the idea that a Twitter post isn’t exactly like a Facebook status update. I’ll get there! In fact, I’m soon to be on to my second post in one day (previously unheard of for me!).

While I’m getting adjusted and acclimated to the Twitter environment, I decided to take a look and see how other small to mid-size businesses were making use of their Twitters. Boy did I find out a lot!

For example, a man in San Francisco named Sam Kimball recently started a new business—a crème brûlée cart that he takes around the city. He sells new and interesting flavors of crème brûlée such as lavender and chocolate raspberry. Soon after signing up for a Twitter account he began to notice more and more customers coming to his cart to purchase crème brûlées. Upon inquiring how they heard about his cart they all said they had seen his tweets on Twitter. Now, Sam has over 5,000 followers on Twitter. When he is planning on taking out his cart, he will post the location he is heading to as well as the flavors of crème brûlée he is taking along… And then he goes. And his Twitter followers follow him in real life to get some tasy crème brûlée.

Here in Cincinnati Woodhouse Day Spa uses Twitter to announce weekly specials and discounts on Tuesday. They like using Twitter as opposed to a mass email because Twitter is a fresher, faster way to reach more people. And people are almost guaranteed to read a tweet because it’s fast and easy.

All over the country businesses and individuals are using Twitter to market and drive customers to their business. So far it has proven to be highly effective at communicating the desires and offers of business owners to their clientel.

My question to you is are you on Twitter? What have you used it for? Do you have any Twitter-related business or personal success stories? Please share! And if you’re on Twitter—follow me!!

Resources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html?_r=1&em