Last week the Telegraph carried an article about “how small businesses are rapidly developing the Twitter habit, sending 3m messages or ‘tweets’ a day to cut marketing costs and keep tabs on competitors”, following a survey completed by 02. They estimate that 700,000 small businesses are now using the site and numbers are growing rapidly every day.
So, let me have a think about this. Roughly 1 in 6 small businesses are using Twitter as noted above. I am based in the South East (Kent), where there are a high proportion of small businesses, I have a big network of contacts…and I know of only 6 local business owners that are on Twitter (and note that I don’t say, using Twitter – 3 of those 6 have only posted about 10 times in total between them!). Having looked at another report quoting the 02 research it would seem that the research was completed with 500 businesses and then presumably the results were extrapolated to give the 700,000 figure. I would suggest that those 500 weren’t a representative sample of small businesses in my area. What do you think?
Twitter got a lot of publicity around, and following, Stephen Fry’s appearance on Jonathan Ross’ show a few weeks ago and hoards of people have signed up since. It’s definitely the next big thing but I think there is some way to go before UK small businesses predominantly trading locally realise its true potential. I often quote the story of the Houston coffee shop, CoffeeGroundz, that has really embraced Twitter to double their clientele; there you can order from your seat using Direct Messaging on Twitter – how cool is that?! Really looking forward to when I can do the same from my local Starbucks!
You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jododds
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