Is Twitter a Viable Commercial Use Platform for Small Businesses? an Empirical Study Targeting Two Audiences in the Small Business Community
2010; Volume: 15; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1087-8955
AutoresPatrick R. Geho, Sara Louise Smith, Stephen D. Lewis,
Tópico(s)Impact of Technology on Adolescents
ResumoABSTRACT Entrepreneurs typically work long, arduous hours just maintaining all operations associated with their businesses. Thus, deciding to get involved in an Internet social phenomenon, which could be a passing fad, may or may not be a smart marketing move for small business owners. The excitement about Twitter is hard to avoid. Internet searches regarding Twitter's use as a marketing tool reveal thousands of hits. Although there are claims about the value of Twitter for small business marketing use, there is a lack of empirical evidence to back up grand, sweeping claims about the actual usefulness of the tool. This study was conducted to provide empirical evidence regarding Twitter's usefulness. INTRODUCTION The Internet community is abuzz with talk about Twitter, blogging about Twitter, and of course, tweeting on Twitter. Twitter is a mini-blogging tool that gives its users 140 characters to answer one question: What are you doing? The character limit makes Twitter different from other social networking sites. Simplicity makes the learning curve for Twitter short, drawing in a diverse group of users looking for a way to stay in touch with friends and family, networking with professionals, keeping up with industry news, or staying in tune with their favorite celebrity tweeters. Twitter's growth is evident, but the media suggest that businesses are flocking to Twitter looking for a simple, cheap way to market their business and communicate the latest industry news about their company. Small business owners might ask: Is Twitter a viable marketing tool for my business? TWITTER USERS Who is using Twitter? According to Quantcast.com (2009), a web site that offers audience data for any site on the Internet, recent data indicated: * Twitter reaches approximately 23.5 million people per month in the U.S. * 54% are female * 44% are between 18 and 34 * 72% are Caucasian, 14% are African American * Typical household income is between $30 thousand and $60 thousand * 1% of the addicts contribute 35% of the visits * 72% are passers-by, while only 27% are regular users With this vast audience it would seem that small businesses would be embracing social media as a part of their marketing plan. Pear Analytics (Kelly, 2009) conducted a study to determine purposes for which people are using Twitter. They compared their research with other studies that were conducted recently, getting similar results. Their sample consisted of 2,000 tweets from the public timeline every 30 minutes for two weeks. The resulting tweets were then categorized into six areas: news, spam, selfpromotion, pointless babble, conversational, and pass-along value. Here are their findings: Self-promotion usage was less than expected at 5.85% of all tweets. This may be enlightening to some, as there appears to be a flurry of companies and businesses joining Twitter to promote products and services. Business Twitter users appear to be well established national and multi-national firms. A Twitter activity study conducted by Sysomos, Incorporated, a social media analytics company, indicated that 5% of the users contribute 75% of the tweets. This finding was based on indexing 11.5 million accounts, and then looking at the top 5% of users who accounted for the most Tweets. Furthermore, they found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day. The most active Twitter machine bot users were operated by sources such as hotels offering deals, regional and national news services, regional weather services, the top news within Digg (a web site where users are news and information contributors), tags within Delicious (a social bookmarking website), and financial aggregators. These very active bots represented one-quarter of all tweets (Cheng & Evans, 2009). Though extensive in nature, the study did not indicate Twitter use by small businesses. …
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