Yesterday, I was chatting with my good friend @RobinRobson, and as usual, we talked about Twitter, small businesses, big companies, banks, retailers, the UK economy, and how supermarkets are overcharging us… it was a lengthy conversation. During our talk, I told Robin that I have always believed and still believe that Twitter is a game changer for small businesses.
So why do I say that? Traditional marketing, like radio, TV, billboards, and newspapers, mainly favors those with the most money. The ones who can afford more air time, longer ads during the Super Bowl, and extra TV commercials usually come out on top. In traditional marketing, it really comes down to how big your budget is.
With Twitter however it has nothing to do with marketing budget. You can each have the same type of account, with access to the same type of information. So it has nothing to do with money. What it has to do with is how you approach things, and here is where small businesses can massively gain over their goliath adversaries.
Most corporates dont get Twitter and will probably never get Twitter. They have totally the wrong approach and have their heads firmly wrapped around the ROI question. This means that for the vast majority of large companies they will miss out on the greatest marketing opportunity of all time and they sit round their boardroom tables discussing for years what is the return of investment of doing social media.
And that is where small businesses can gain a massive advantage. They are quick, nimble, agile, can get going quickly, and most importantly don’t usually have a finance director that wants 5 years of evidence to prove that social media is worth doing. Small business cannot compete on price or marketing spend, if they try they will sadly lose. So small business needs to think and act and market themselves differently. And that is where Twitter is priceless.