There is a lot of confusion surrounding Twitter with some reports that the retention rate for first time users being quite low. However, many of those come back at a latter date and, once they have come to grips with what it is all about, stay. Do you know what is Twitter really is?

From my perspective, Twitter is a cross between blog and cell phone text message. A blog gets published for the world to see whereas a text message is generally a private message between two people that is somewhat limited in the number of characters that can be sent at any one time.

Twitter takes the character limitations of a text message and makes it available to the world at large. This means you can send and receive text type messages. Where Twitter differs in it’s social aspect. You can ‘follow’ (receive Tweets or messages) from those who interest you. Likewise, those that are interested in what you write will ‘follow’ you.

Having a company Twitter account is like having a company blog, the only difference being in the size of the posts – or Tweets – that you can publish. How does this benefit business? Sending out Tweets announcing price changes, new product releases, or that you have published updated information on your site or blog can be undertaken quickly without any special knowledge – just like a text message.

In fact many companies are now coming to understand the real power of Twitter when it comes to social marketing. Some have moved some of their marketing focus from the more traditional to Twitter with some startling results.

Twitter can be a huge time waster if you want sit and read about the daily occurrences in someone’s life. However, if you are smart, and only subscribe to those whose Tweets are important to your business, then you will that Twitter is a powerful social marketing tool.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 2:34 am and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.