I’ve alluded to it before, but I’m willing to come right out with it now for the first time…
Twitter is about as useful for your online business as… (take your pick)
Cutting off your hands and trying to touch type with the remaining nubs on your arms…
Biting through your broadband cabling with your teeth for no reason…
Writing to your local government and BEGGING for a tax audit.
…
You get the point.
Why marketers started telling you this thing is worth using to generate traffic, I’ve no idea…
CAN you generate traffic with it?
Of course.
I could also generate a few visitors by tattooing my URL to my ass and running around my local neighborhood naked – but that doesn’t make that a good strategy does it?
The bottom line is this…
Do you honestly think any good, successful online business person – I mean REALLY successful – 7 figures a year online…
Do you think a single one of them wakes up in the morning and thinks… “Hmm… How can I spend more time on my Twitter strategy today?”
Get real.
Add Twitter as a marketing tool to the list of BS you got fed, laugh at yourself for not realizing it earlier, and move on.
That’s all I got ta say about that.
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FINALLY!! One brilliant marketer agrees with me! twitter is a no follow piece of sh**! its a waste of time and energy! thanks dude.. u just made my day..
Ass.
You beat me to the punch after our little chat.
Hey Andrew,
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one!
While I wouldn’t use it as a main source of traffic and income over the last month over 1,000 people have click on my links in twitter posts.
Now I’ve got my twitter linked to my other social sites and blogs so when I tweet it’s copied into across multiple sites and that’s where the traffic really starts to multiply depending on the time of day I can have 60 clicks within 2mins of posting a link.
Myles,
I don’t believe Twitter isn’t a viable source for traffic as far as niche marketers are concerned. It’s a networking tool.
1000 people over a month isn’t that much traffic either – did you see if it made sales? And is this the IM market?
Too much work to invest.
“1000 people over a month isn’t that much traffic either”
So if you sent say an email to 3000 people and only 1000 people clicked what’s the difference?
Email = 15 mins plus sending time and formatting etc.
Twitter = 2 mins direct to the point with a link.
Yes I made sale and commissions I’m not really in the IM niche but Joel Comm is and his using it to promote his new book and IPhone application.
Other great uses.
Survey’s
Product testing
Hey Myles,
Thanks for your input.
I don’t deny that you can generate traffic from it. And I don’t deny that it can help you with networking.
You mention 2 mins for a twitter post – but how many posts did you make in the month? How much time did you spend adding all the people to your followers to make the twitter posts effective?
What I want someone to prove is that you can spend an hour a day on twitter, and an hour a day on SEO/creating new offers/market research/testing affiliate programs/ other activities… and tweeting is going to make you more money for the time you spend.
And the market is important too. As I’ve mentioned before, you’re not going to see any results unless you’re in a market like IM where your customers are tech related, they hang out online, and use twitter. That cancels most “niche” marketers out right there.
At the end of the day, I still feel that an ass tattoo paraded in the perfectly trafficked public place – coupled with an arrest, a tv interview, and a dash of public notoriety would on the whole generate more traffic.
Andrew
Andrew,
Could you explain why mega marketers, like John Reese, twit like mad while they lead up to a product launch?
And while most twit-heads blast sales links on twitter, the ones that seem to “get it” post really neat, useful stuff, and then slowly build up to any launches they are doing.
I think John did about 1-3 million in the first two days…
I agree – while Twitter may be a good tool, I think time is spent much better on different marketing activities.
Just because it has some effect doesn’t make it worth spending time on in favour of stronger tools.
Josh
Jack,
I’d love to!
Because he already has a MASSIVE following, MASSIVE respect in the industry, and he knows that now his target market hangs out there. He could do tweets, email his list, myspace bulletin, whatever. He’s already got the respect, he’s already the industry leader, he’s already got the leverage.
In return I’d like to ask question:
Did John Reese BECOME who he is, achieve that level, BY tweeting?
…
I’m talking about the effectiveness of twitter for every day people. I’m talking about whether it’s effective for you and me, where we are now, to spend our time writing and reading useless little messages about what we had for lunch and what movie we’re seeing tonight.
For me, I’d rather spend the time elsewhere.
Andrew
Andrew,
I think you nail it right on the mark. John spent a good year providing really good content to his subscribers, so much so, that it went viral, and when he finally did his traffic secrets launch, i think he could have done 200k without a sales page.
So, perhaps you could provide super useful content, enough so that others tell their friends to go follow you.
Actually, I think the best thing is some of the free tools that link up things like your blog, and auto-post it to your twitter account. That way, you get dual leverage for a single activity.
Do you use these tools?
Nice one Andrew!!
Bout time someone talks sense to all new marketing people….. Quite frankly: Twitter is for twits that have nothing else to do and follow some new marketing guru idiot like blind sheep (Not that John Reese falls into this category – he used it well to create interest and controversy. But, not everyone has a following like John Rees).
E.g: I spent an hour on a marketing campaign yesterday – result… 20,000 unique hits and 987 new sign-ups.
Will twittering away give me that type of traffic?
And, interesting point – 90% of twitter generated traffic are tyre kickers and fellow marketers – don’t want them to visit my sites: I want customers!
Duh – are we in this popularity or for money?
Go boy, go…. keep it up and break all the bs myths and useless information.
Cheers
John
Oh yeah, it really depends on what niches you are into.
If you are into IM, technology, programming or any IT savvy niche, twit all you can. I believe it will be useful to generate SOME traffic.
BUT if you are into diabetes, scrap-booking, dating, bonsai niches… do you think those people will twit? Maybe some, but majority don’t use twitter.
You know what… I have niche sites and I don’t use mybloglog , twitter, rss feed etc – all these supposedly tools to help you generate traffic and readership.
Why? Because I know they DON’T use them. What they want is good old content.
By the way… I do make money in my niches and I don’t twit.
Hey Andrew,
I thank you for this post…I have heard the twitter thing over and over…I was afraid I was missing something. Thank God I was just to busy at the time to look into it.
With all the information overload IM’ers suffer with It is nice to know this is one chore I can cross off my list.
Debg
wow, you just revealed the naked truth!
Twitter as a direct response marketing tool?
-No way, inefficient.
Twitter as a branding tool?
-Absolutely!
You mentioned 7 figure people using twitter, and they absolutely do… as a branding effort.
To expect to make a bundle by putting an affiliate link in what is, essentially, a teeny tiny blog post is just silly. However, using it to build your brand as a whole can prove to be valuable beyond measure.
So why are you on Twitter?
See here Rick:
http://andrewhansen.name/web-20/twitter-the-good-the-bad-the-long-the-short/
Andrew