Yesterday, I had a discussion with a colleague about whether or not a specific business should be a part of Twitter. This is a business whose customers are not typically engaged in social media (less than 7%). This debate continued for probably 6 minutes or so.
We could’ve just set up a Twitter account and tried it in that amount of time. Any idiot can make a Twitter account, find some people with similar interests to follow, and start participating. It takes almost no time or effort. There’s nothing to lose.
And take this example. A couple of days ago I tweeted the following:
@culbersontwit Enjoying Mrs. Renfro’s peach salsa this evening. Good stuff. Is there a hot version available?
A typical personal, late in the evening throw-away Tweet, but I have a couple of die hard foodie friends. I thought maybe they’d send me links to their favorite salsa recipes, or possibly even know the answer to my question.
The next time I open Tweetie on my iPhone, I see this in my replies:
@RenfroFoods @culbersontwit Thanx for tweeting abt us; u might like to try our “sweet heat” flavors Raspberry Chipotle and Mango Habanero
Unexpected. Answered my question. Almost no effort.
And you can be certain I’ll be looking for Mango Habanero the next time I’m at Sobeys.
It’s certainly an interesting quandary, whether target audiences will see the light. However, I think this is more a tactical question - which is the best way to strategically position a company or brand?
To some extent jumping on the social media bandwagon is a ‘must do’ for consumer brands, but for b2b clients I still think there’s still a lot of mileage in building a multi-faceted online presence - not least to optimise ‘vertical search’ and create all important cross-channel content.
All things considered, there’s never any harm trying. In fact I was drawn here by a Tweet about social media - which just goes to show how pervasive online exposure can be!