Twitter boosts business opportunities for SMB’s by 663%

Twitter boosts business opportunities for SMB’s by 663% - Computer Business Review Jump to page content Accessibility We have updated our privacy policy. In the latest update it explains what cookies are and how we use them on our site. To learn more about cookies and their benefits, please view our privacy policy. Please be aware that parts of this site will not function correctly if you disable cookies. By continuing to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy unless you have disabled them. Log in or Register for enhanced features|Forgotten Password? Software Enterprise Applications E-commerce Business Intelligence Content Management App Dev and SOA Open Source Middleware Operating Systems Service Management New Media and Search Malware Analytics Systems & Networks Desktops Servers Storage Networking Virtualisation Security Micro Electronics Data Centres Blade Servers Communications Telecoms Unified Communications Mobility Services IT Services Outsourcing and BPO Business Continuity The CIO Agenda The Boardroom Green IT Midmarket IT Cloud Cloud Platform Cloud SaaS Blogs | White Papers | Suppliers | Dining Club | Events | Reports | Companies | Videos Computer Business Review All Computer Business Review Return to: CBR Home | News Twitter boosts business opportunities for SMB’s by 663% Select a Technology sector ------------------------ Enterprise Applications E-commerce Business Intelligence Content Management App Dev and SOA Open Source Middleware Operating Systems Service Management New Media and Search Malware Analytics ------------------------ Desktops Servers Storage Networking Virtualisation Security Micro Electronics Data Centres Blade Servers ------------------------ Telecoms Unified Communications Mobility ------------------------ IT Services Outsourcing and BPO Business Continuity ------------------------ The Boardroom Green IT Midmarket IT ------------------------ Cloud Platform Cloud SaaS News Tineka Smith Published 01 June 2012

Research reveals that the public is increasingly using Twitter to find professional services.

Photo Credit: William Hook

In just two years, Twitter has seen a 663% growth in people using Twitter to ask for business recommendations, according to Orange Business research.

Small businesses can particularly benefit from the increase by having a strong Twitter presence. SMB's could be missing out on many potential customers by not engaging on Twitter.

"Today, Twitter represents a compelling word of mouth engine that can deliver significant business opportunities to small businesses across a wide variety of sectors," says Mike Tomlinson, small business marketing director at Orange Business.

Orange Business research revealed that the most popular searches for professional services were web designers, solicitors, accountants, architects and copywriters.

"The current economic conditions being what they are, it is critical for small businesses to utilise whatever technology they can to win new business," says Tomlinson. "With 10 million people in the UK on Twitter, what business can afford to ignore that many potential customers? By accessing Twitter whenever and wherever they can professionals can keep a closer eye on any requests for services and respond before the competition does, keeping them an important step ahead in rough economic times."

Orange Business advises SMB's to do the 5 following tips to make your presence stand out on Twitter.

1. Mobilise your Twitter account: Being able to access Twitter wherever you are makes it easier to respond to work requests in a timely manner and allows you to make the most of any 'dead time' to see if people are shopping for your services.

2. Be prepared to offer advice: Professionals need to showcase their expertise and accessibility over Twitter. It's not about giving away free counsel but showing you know what you're talking about and sharing information which might spread far and wide. Your words of wisdom will reach far more potential customers than your silence.

3. Be quick: Twitter is all about the now. If you don't offer your services to somebody looking, your competitors will.

4. Reach out to communities of tweeters: The more networks you are engaged in and the more people you follow and engage with, the fewer degrees of separation there will be between you and potential business leads.

5. Demonstrate 'real-world' credentials - Make sure you can easily link from your Twitter profile to a website that showcases your location, qualifications and credentials. Show what you can on your profile.

Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.

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Twitter hopes to ring up big numbers from small business self-serve ads - CNET News

If it works as hoped, the new program will let Twitter tap into a huge roster of new advertisers

Twitter for small business

(Credit: Twitter)

Twitter has finally begun a slow-motion roll-out of a plan to generate more business from small businesses with a self-serve ad program.

Initially, only a small group of businesses will have access to this new advertising opportunity -- Twitter says the number participating small businesses over the coming weeks will "steadily increase." If it works as advertised-no pun intended-this could be a very big deal as it will tap into a huge demographic of potential advertising. The hope is that this will have the same sort of impact on Twitter's business that AdWords had on Google's.

That's a tall order but at least Twitter's finally out of the gate. In February, Twitter announced plans to let small businesses to set up advertising accounts on their own over Twitter where, among other things, they could highlight promotions and messages in their customers' Twitter timelines. The program revolves around promoted accounts and promoted tweets. With promoted accounts: the service will examine a company's current followers, searching for people with similar interests and then recommend who to follow.

With promoted tweets, a business gets charged when someone follows their account or engages with a promoted tweet. A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment on the financial arrangements beyond the official statement.

In a video Twitter produced, it offers the following:

"You determine the limit of how much you want to spend per day and how much you want to spend per new follower or engagement," Twitter said in a video announcement of the program. "So there are never any surprises. You can also decide where geographically where you want your content to be promoted."

Not exactly a gabfest, but it is what it is.

The Web is now the place to go for news and entertainment. Look here for the latest on blogs, music, video, virtual worlds, social networking, and more.

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Twitter Startup Seppuku Gives Way to a Less-Ironic Actual Business: Tech - Businessweek

Ted Tobiason, Deutsche Bank AG (DBK)’s head of equity capital markets for the technology industry, is doing something that would get most investment bankers fired: tweeting about work.

Tobiason is the only investment banker authorized by the German firm to have a business-related account on Twitter Inc.’s website, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 5 issue. While he’s no Ashton Kutcher, who has 9.6 million followers, Tobiason has attracted more than 100, including executives at Silicon Valley startups. His first tweet, in January, predicted that there would be more than 40 initial public offerings by technology companies this year.

“I want venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to know that our bankers love technology, that we are evangelists and not mercenaries,” said Tobiason, 43, who is based in San Francisco. “Tweeting is a way to show that we are part of the game and that we understand the changes in technology and we are using them.”

With his @TedTobiasonDB account, he’s trying to reach more potential clients after Deutsche Bank climbed to second place behind Morgan Stanley last year in Bloomberg’s global ranking of underwriters for technology IPOs, from the fourth spot in 2010. He is a rare bird on Wall Street. Investment banks tend to use social media for marketing and recruiting purposes only.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Barclays Plc (BARC), and Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the banks Facebook Inc. (FB) chose to underwrite its $5 billion IPO, ban investment bankers from using Facebook, Twitter and other social media on their work computers. One reason: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires banks to monitor and archive employee communications, and doing so on third-party platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is much harder than on corporate e- mail programs.

Banks sometimes permit financial advisers to have business accounts, and investment bankers can have personal social-media accounts. Those advising technology companies have found ways to use clients’ products to build professional relationships without violating their firms’ policies. Michael Grimes, global co-head of technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley (MS), plays Zynga Inc.’s “CityVille” and “Empires & Allies” games on Facebook with company founder Mark Pincus. Zynga chose Morgan Stanley to lead its IPO last year.

Deutsche Bank started using Twitter in 2008 to promote a golf tournament it sponsored in Boston. Tobiason raised the idea of having a professional account in the fall of 2011 and eventually won approval from the communications and legal and compliance departments.

“He happened to be at the right place at the right time,” said John Tracey, head of the bank’s brand communications for the Americas. The bank expects to say yes to other executives who have asked for permission to tweet, he said.

Tobiason’s tweeting is not off-the-cuff: He can’t write about share offerings Deutsche Bank underwrites, he must clear his tweets through the firm’s communications department and the bank has software that records his posts.

“For Deutsche Bank, it is a great PR and marketing opportunity,” said Joe Ciarallo, vice president of communications at Buddy Media Inc., a New York firm that develops social-media advertising software. The bank should let Tobiason tweet on his own, without prescreening, he said, which slows down his posts and keeps him from being part of the Twitter “conversation.” For companies, Ciarallo said, making full use of Twitter is “all about training and trusting employees.”

Tobiason’s sporadic tweets -- fewer than 40 so far -- focus on the IPO market, commenting on whether the latest offerings are pricing above or below what’s expected. On Feb. 17, when Brightcove Inc., the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based provider of cloud-based services, rose 30 percent on its first day of trading, he wrote “Congrats Brightcove #IPO.”

He also maintains a personal account with fewer followers and only four tweets to date, compared with 38 for his work account. That barrier between personal and professional will eventually go away, and financial services firms will come to fully embrace social media, said Jules Maltz, a general partner at Institutional Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, California- based venture capital fund and a Twitter investor.

“Tobiason is an expert on tech IPOs and the fact that he embraced Twitter to share his notes with the market shows that Deutsche Bank is forward-thinking,” said Maltz, who follows him on Twitter.

That’s exactly the message the firm wants to send after its technology team capitalized on relationships it started in 2008 and 2009, when business in the U.S. was slow and China’s growth presented better opportunities, said Emmanuel Desousa, Deutsche Bank’s global head of Internet and new media banking, based in San Francisco.

Four of the fifteen technology IPOs Deutsche Bank helped manage in 2011 were Internet Chinese companies, such as Tudou Holdings Ltd. and Renren Inc., according to the bank. Deutsche Bank was among advisers of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest e-commerce company, in its $2.3 billion offer to take its Alibaba.com unit private, the biggest announced technology deal so far this year.

“Our social media and e-commerce clients are changing the way the world communicates,” said Desousa. “We have to change the way we communicate to stay relevant as Internet and tech bankers.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Serena Saitto in New York at ssaitto@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Eric Gelman at egelman3@bloomberg.net

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Is Wales missing out on business and social opportunities by not having its own Twitter trend? - WalesOnline

It's the website where hundreds of millions of users around the world post news, business and personal information thousands of times a second.

But Wales could be missing out on vital business and social opportunities thanks to the lack of a regional “trend” option on Twitter.

Recent events from Wales, such as the death of national football manager Gary Speed and the break-up of the engagement of Katherine Jenkins and Gethin Jones, pictured, were among the most popular subjects on the microblogging site when they happened.

But it is now being claimed that without a Wales-specific trend thread – where Twitter identifies the most popular subjects being discussed through key words and provides an on-screen chart – users are unable to see what is popular within the nation.

Users can currently see what is trending worldwide, in the US and the UK, as well as several other countries which do not include Wales.

Dr Jeremy Segrott, a research fellow in Public Health at Cardiff University is leading calls for Wales to have a more visible presence on the site, which was created in 2006.

He said engaging with young people is the key to his work – which involves researching alcohol misuse and smoking among young people – and Twitter would go a long way towards increasing interest in his research.

“Social media is integral to the way we work these days and increasing our visibility on Twitter would benefit academic research,” he said.

“Most of the trending topics for Wales are unlikely to show up when merged with the rest of the UK.

“Having Welsh trends would allow the Twitter community here to develop better connections. For me, connections with others is one of Twitter’s strengths, and the experience would be even more positive if I could connect it in a more meaningful way to where I live.

“Anything that’s putting Wales on the map is a good thing.

“Having a ‘Cardiff’ trend button would be good, but then the people of North Wales would not be included. Having a Wales-wide option will show what’s going on in Wales as a whole.”

Social media marketing expert Allan Beaton – who runs Cardiff based Social B2B Ltd and has worked with businesses across Wales, implementing their social media campaigns – said a Wales Twitter trend function would be useful but said there are already ways to find area-specific information.

He said: “At present, there are multiple Twitter clients and apps that allow you to monitor trends more precisely. These are all great tools – with most of them you can change the orientation of your searches to other parts of the globe.

“Trends are great and can help join communities together, but business can then hijack those tags and trends for commercial usage.

“I certainly hope that businesses in Wales will begin to take notice of the opportunities that social media can offer in the long term. It really is about social and not selling, so if business leaders can see that they will, in the long term, have a more engaged online community that will turn into loyal customers.”

Food blogger Nikki Vivian said Twitter helped her set up her own food review and freelance writing business, Your Last Mouthful, after starting a food blog as a hobby in 2011, which she runs alongside her full time job at Cardiff University.

The 29 year-old credits the social media network in allowing her to create her business.

She said: “I started my food blog a year ago and I am now running a business as a result. I do my marketing through social media, especially Twitter, as it drives traffic to my website and is such an amazing marketing tool, and it’s free.

“If it wasn’t for Twitter, my blog traffic would be halved. A Wales/Cardiff trend button would be brilliant for me as my businesses involves working with food businesses in Cardiff so it would be an ideal way to reach them.”

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