As Twitter continues to increase in popularity, it’s the ideal choice to use as an online marketing tool for virtually anyone who needs and wants to promote their brand or business, but Twitter marketing strategies do come with a few drawbacks as well. Many times, marketing experts fail to see these inadequacies and therefore only focus on the benefits of advertising in Twitter. Here are some pros and cons to determine if using Twitter for business is right for you and your brand.
Twitter Marketing Pros
• Reach Every Corner of the World:
No need to worry about reaching the foreign market on Twitter, since most of the world is there anyway. Your advertising message will reach literally millions of people without spending a lot time to do so when advertising on Twitter.
• Historical and Statistical Usage Data:
Use popular tools for tracking your Twitter marketing strategies and campaigns as well as take advantage of the available online software in order to analyze your account. Discover a wealth of information, including important topics and high searched-on hashtags, whereby you can easily view information by the hour as well as helpful graphs based on popular hashtags.
• Advanced User Searches:
You can use Twitter for business by using their advanced search page to find clients or customers in your area to effectively reach your target audience in your particular industry. Or, you can use tweetups, which are offline meetings of users on Twitter or simply follow them to start building a network.
• URL Shortener:
You can instantly share any link you wish without the need to go through any URL shortening annoyances to save as many characters as you can in order to publish your tweet. Twitter will automatically shorten your link as much as possible and account for this into the tweet by simply updating the character count with the shorter URL rather than the full one.
• Automation:
Various tools will allow you to publish automated tweets when you need to be elsewhere like on vacation and still generate tweets. However, it’s not wise to solely rely on automated tweets since you’ll miss out on many important interactions.
Twitter Marketing Cons
• Addiction and Distraction:
Like many other business marketing tools, advertising in Twitter can become addictive over time. Before you realize it, you’ll start obsessively checking your @-replies and retweets throughout the day as well as checking your smartphone every couple of minutes to see if there are any new and interesting alerts. And so, rather than working on certain aspects of your business, you’ll keep getting distracted by the news, debates, and Twitter trends.
• Wasting Too Much Time:
If you’re using Twitter for business, you need to respond to potential clients who are trying to communicate with you if you want to build a good business and solid brand. People love to interact with one another whether it’s business or social.
• Spam
It takes a bit of practice to ensure you’re interacting adequately enough on Twitter and not missing any key marketing opportunities without coming off like a spammer. If you’re new to Twitter, your behavior could make others shun you without you even realizing it.
Marketing on Twitter definitely has its advantages, but you must be aware of the cons as well. Overall, Twitter is a very effective tool for any online marketer who’s willing to take the time to honestly interact, listen, and engage with other users that they could potentially benefit from.