Why Twitter is a Goldmine
As many internet marketers have already discovered, Twitter is a goldmine. Some claim there have already been twelve million accounts created in the past year or two. Although counts vary, at times Alexa ranks Twitter as the 38th most popular website on the internet. In February 2009, Twitter had a monthly growth rate of 1382%. That’s astounding. Facebook, in comparison, was 228%. Think about that for a second. That is a lot of people, and a lot of potential customers.
What is Twitter, and how can it be used to generate money? Twitter is a social networking tool that provides real-time updates from the “owner” to the “followers.” To a certain extent, this is a micro-blogging platform that allows people who know nothing about html, programming, or the internet to stay in touch with many people at once.
Mailing lists used to serve a function of allowing interested parties to sign up for a website to email them if and when they updated their website. If you are a retailer, online or otherwise, and you wish to maximize your store’s visibility to your customers, maximize your opportunities for revenues, it really doesn’t get much better than a customer that signs up for a mailing list. They are in effect telling you: I like your product, please stay in touch with me, here’s my contact information.
RSS sort of trumped mailing lists. RSS feeds let people who are interested in websites which are regularly updated keep up with the updates. It’s sort of like a fancy mailing list that doesn’t involve mail. One of the drawbacks of RSS is that it requires some modicum of technical savvy. You probably won’t catch the average America Online user stocking up on RSS feeds.
But wow, then along comes Twitter. Instant and personal updates. Not in front of your computer, love to hear every word some Twitter user types? No problem. The tweets can come through straight to your mobile phone. Marketers now have practically 24-hour access to their audience, all at the request of potential buyers! There are some extremely popular Twitter users who actually do sponsored tweets, where the tweet has nothing to do with them or their “product”, they are just sending out an ad to followers because they are being paid to do so.