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The Financial Times reports that small businesses are making better use of Twitter than larger corporations, with just 19 of the UK’s top 100 technology companies using Twitter. By comparison, in the US all the top technology companies use the service for marketing or recruitment purposes.
The data comes from reports commissioned by ntl:Telewest, a division of Virign Media and by O2, a division of Telefonica. The O2 survey shows that 16 per cent of the 500 businesses surveyed said they had saved more than £5,000 on marketing and recruitment costs, while almost a third had saved more than £1,000 since joining Twitter.
Hitwise, a division of Experian which tracks web audiences, said Twitter entered the UK’s top 100 websites in March, and is now ranking at 44, competing well with popular newspaper sites.
More details at FT.com
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This is interesting but I am a bit concerned about the fact that nobody seems to address how these small businesses figured out that they had saved £5,000 on marketing and recruitment or £1,000 getting a better deal
David I am sure you read the press release and than, of course, the complete study. It indicates a whole bunch of problems on how they collected data and raises such questions as:
1) in what period were this savings realized (12 months)?
2) how did respondents know – did they keep track of savings, if so how &/or did they test and recruit 1 person via Twitter vs. another using traditional media (control group) to figure out the savings (quite involved process isn’t it)?
I think we did not save with Twitter (@ComMetrics) but gained insights and knowledge as well as getting help from followers, links from others, VERY helpful indeed.
Possibly we got a few subscribers more to use our web-based software at http://My.ComMetrics.com but these people might have come anyway….with or without Twitter, we are not sure.
So maybe the above reported findings are due because of either:
a) wishful thinking on the part of micro businesses or
b) possibly rationalizing the time spent tweeting….
you be the judge. Thanks for this nice post
In a way it make sense. Small businesses tend to be more personal with their clients. They are run by a much smaller group of people who are intimate with the product/service and thus able to talk about it more with their customers. On Twitter the best practices involve a back and forth dialogue with the followers. A small business will probably do that better!