No Need for Jitters Over Twitter

If your potential customers are a tech-savvy bunch who tap away regularly on their smartphones, getting them to sign up as followers of your Twitter feed may be relatively easy. But if you want them to actually read your tweets and act on them, you've got to be able to stand out from all the other social media messaging. That means writing clever, pithy comments and keeping your followers engaged. Is there someone at your company willing and able to take on that task?

"The bottom line is that with only 4% of adult Americans using Twitter, it's not a good place for small businesses serving the other 96% of adult Americans," King says. "Even if the customers of small business are active Twitter users, the small business has to weigh the time and effort associated with a Twitter presence versus other options."

Twitter works best as a quick easy to disseminate information. Bars and restaurants can send updated messages about drink specials or new menu items to their regular customers. The gourmet food trucks that have sprung up from Brooklyn to the Bay Area use Twitter to tell customers where they'll be parked next.

Outside the hospitality industry, a more compelling use of Twitter is as a source for information -- by following others' feeds, rather than starting one yourself. Sign up to follow tweets from the leading publications in your industry and its main bloggers and you'll be instantly updated on breaking news and stay up to date on topics affecting your company.

But avoiding Twitter entirely doesn't signal that you're a dinosaur; its features simply might not be relevant or applicable to what you do. "Our advice on Twitter to small businesses is to learn and experiment with it," King says. "Test it for a mix of business purposes, measure your results and use it if you're getting a strong return on investment relative to other uses of your time and money."

In other words, Twitter is simply another potential business tool -- not a magic bullet that will bring customers to your door.

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