There are so man different social media applications out there, the concern of the small business is how to get it all done. How much time should be spent on selling, closing, and your books, and how much should be spent online making connections and building a profile?
Twitter is one of those services that is hard to quantify for the small business owner. On the one hand, it gives you instant access to a lot of people. On the other hand, it's just as addictive and distracting as instant messaging.
And this is in a marketplace where most businesses still haven't figured out best practices for e-mail marketing, websites, and mobile marketing. If we can't get the basics of online marketing right, how can we focus on social media?
In this week's Carnival of the Mobilists over at Taptology, SmartMob's Howard Rheingold tells us why he's hooked on Twitter. It's all about moving or dying.
Openness — anyone can join, and anyone can follow anyone else (unless they restrict access to friends who request access)
Immediacy — it’s a rolling present. You won’t get the sense of Twitter if you just check in once a week. You need to hang out for minutes and hours, every day, to get in the groove.
Variety — political or technical argument, gossip, technical info, news flashes, poetry, social arrangements, classrooms, repartee, scholarly references
Reciprocity — people give and ask freely for information they need (this doesn’t necessarily scale or last forever, but right now it’s possible to tune your list — and to contribute to it — to include a high degree of reciprocation)
Entrepreneurs have to learn to succeed. Corporations sit at the portion of the cycle where economies of scale work. For small businesses, looking for new ways to address old problems is our lifeblood. Communities like those we can join on Twitter give us creativity from dozens, and then hundreds of other smart people. Oftentimes, the answer to our problem is merely looking at someone else does in another industry, and applying it to ours.
Move or Die. Find a way to learn. I'm not saying Twitter will make you money, but it does give small businesses a way to connect with many people without having to drive to see them. Is your social group online? Find out where they are, and go join them. Move and Learn, or die. It's the nature of all business.
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