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Media Execs Clueless to How Twitter will make money

2009-07-14T09:28:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) I don’t think there is any question as to why many media outlets are having financial problems. They simply do not understand the new media. I read an article from News Factor called Top Media Execs Wonder How Twitter Will Make Money and I couldn’t help laughing.

What is interesting about online media is that is requires technical proficiency and creativity. Its a medium that requires new ideas and new ways of thinking.

“I think it’s a great service. I just don’t think it’s a natural advertising medium,” said Diller, who heads online conglomerate InterActiveCorp.

John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp., also believes Twitter will be hard-pressed to sell advertising on its messaging service without alienating users. Twitter’s best bet, Malone said, probably is to simply get people so addicted to the service that they might eventually pay fees.

But see this is why newspapers are closing and magazines are reducing circulation or like PC Magazine, no longer in print media.

Media executives want to know how Twitter will make money and I look at Twitter and think how can it not?

First off, clear your head of advertisements. Push that to the curb. The bulk of the Twitter using populace probably wouldn’t click on a link or even consider flashing banners, ad links, sponsorships, etc. Although I have a few ideas how they could get advertising to work lets look at the main things Twitter can do.

The acquisition of a company like Tweet Later. Tweet Later has a long list of features that are very useful for a lot of Twitterers. If Twitter doesn’t purchase this company they could develop these tools on their own. The addition of the professional tools for a small fee. Malone said that Twitter needs to get people so addicted that they might eventually pay fees… silliness. According to their site, Tweet Later service has more than 100,000 users. The service is about 30 bucks a month and users, especially business and marketers, use it. If Twitter picked it up and 10% of the users paid for the tools, Twitter would be looking at ~$140 million a year.

Twitter could produce a system of development tools to software companies for easier interface. The toolkit would be free, but could include a support channel for a nominal monthly fee. Or have the toolkit cost a certain amount of money and add support fees to it. The Twitter modding community is already quite large and the vast array of tools for Twitter is one of its main features, if programmers had even more access to Twitter controls that market could become even larger than it is now.

Twitter could offer a la carte services. They could have the Tweet Later tools, maybe a UI like TweetDeck or Twirl, etc and make it so you can say grab five “power” features for $5 or 15 features for $9.99. By making it user choice as far as the features you get for the fee, users can purchase what they need, making the population of paying customers larger. Heck, Twitter could even make a marketplace so users can see everything Twitter has to offer and all of the tools other companies have, free or fee based.

Now back to advertising. Twitter can make gateway ad landing pages if they wanted for all URLs that are clicked on from tweets. Personally, I wouldn’t like it, but it wouldn’t make me stop clicking on links I find in tweets considering roughly 80% of the links I have clicked on have been very useful.

I am not really going to mention the other ideas I have because this is becoming quite a long blog, but I hope people see the potential is there without too much work for Twitter to become quite profitable and they can do it without advertising or mandatory subscriptions like the pedestrian media magnets believe. Principles here can be applied to any industry as well. You find what people want and you give it to them in the best possible way and in doing so you provide a great service and the customer will be happy to pay for it

About David Dunlap:
Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com, as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional and search engine marketing has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.

http://www.gawkwire.com/business/media_execs_clueless_to_how_twitter_will_make_money.html

Twitter 101: Business Building using Twitter

2009-07-08T09:18:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) According to Hitwise research, Twitter sends traffic to social networks. In fact, it can almost be considered a social networking search engine. Search engines send less than 10% downstream clicks to social network sites, while Twitter drives around 20% of its visitors to social networks. So what does this mean? If you have a blog, wiki, Flickr, Facebook account for work you should have a Twitter account as well. It therefore follows that the development of your Twitter network, you can develop your social networking platforms.

Building and Developing Your Twitter Network

Twitter networks go though stages and when comparing these stages it is not unlike cultivating a garden. When growing flowers you don’t dump tons of fertilizer and water on them, you slowly nurture them over the course of weeks if not months. Making a successful Twitter network requires time, but it does not require a large amount of work.

The first stage of your network is getting your initial 50 to 100 followers. Your account should include your picture or your company logo (if this is a company account). Your Twitter profile page should be linked to your most important site (personal blog or company site; index page, basically whatever is on your business cards). Promote your Twitter account by adding the profile to your forum, blog, and email signatures. This right here is the gift that keeps on giving. If you are already a prolific writer or social networker you don’t have any extra work to do in this aspect. When you do add tweets make them useful and timely, but do not over do it. Having no tweets and then slamming the channel with 30 tweets in a row is overkill.

Now that you have your followers it’s time to keep them. Take an active role in those who follow you and those who reply to your tweets. Follow those who follow you, if they link to places then go ahead and read them. This is all about common courtesy and since they are trying to hold on to their followers as well, you will probably find something useful. If you especially like the link, the link to it with your blog. This is networking after all

On a special note, using cool scripts to update Twitter is nice, but those who follow you on Twitter probably follow you on other social sites and having something spam multiple sites can be a put off. Essentially it tells your network they aren’t worth your time to address. If you want consolidation, then by all means using something like Ping.fm, but post separate messages on your different sites, even if you are posting about the same thing, make different messages. The extra steps will be rewarded.

Now the final stage, is basically maintenance of your Twitter network and using it in constructive ways. I want to stress that Twitter is two way street. If you want value out of Twitter you need to put value in it. Up until now, we have been interested in gaining Twitter followers and keeping them. As you go you have been discussing things that you are doing with your company, while providing useful information about yourself, your company, and things you find interesting. Now is where we kick it into high gear not just for your site, but for your followers.

How to Use Your Twitter Network

Your Twitter network should be mutually beneficial. At its most basic, Twitter can be used to direct traffic to various links and in this manner send traffic to your social networking sites. This is the obvious usage and if you are using Twitter than you should be taking advantage of this facet. However, there are many more uses to Twitter and all of them can provide quite useful for your business.

Twitter can be used to bounce ideas and brainstorm. This is especially good when you are using a private Twitter network (say for your company or maybe for a professional network). The ability to bounce off ideas around the world from something as convenient as your mobile is a very powerful thing. Along with brainstorming there are many project platforms such as Hudson that have Twitter plug-ins. So you can be alerted when a new build or version of your project is done and then talk about it with your network.

You can use Twitter to perform research. Marketing, product, technology, and company research can all be performed using Twitter in either a private or public network format. You can also use it for QnAs of which there are many examples that have worked wonders.

Most blog software allows tweets to go straight to the comment section. Blogs are already a hot topic for linking from tweets, with a little modding you build a symbiosis between linking a blog in tweet allowing you network to discuss the blog in tweets.

Twitter can also provide the ultimate in transparency in customer and company feedback. Say you had a server and you had 50 clients on it. You give them all a twitter account to hookup to, for the sake of being generic we will call it Server110. Now all your clients on that server are on the Server110 channel. If the server has a problem the technician can tweet an update here saying the server has a hard drive problem. Other people can do an @Server110 and say tweet about a support problem. In this manner, a constant line of communication between the technician and the clients is opened.

Lastly, if you watch the news, by now you know that Twitter is a great means to provide live coverage of events.

I hope by now, if you weren’t of the opinion already, you are all beginning to see the power of Twitter and why this is not something that a successful business should blow off. Instead, I challenge you all to develop your Twitter networks and find new ways for one of the fastest and most convenient ways to communicate in the world today. And while you are at drop me a line at my Twitter account, David_WHM.

About David Dunlap
Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com, as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional and search engine marketing has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.

http://www.gawkwire.com/business/twitter_101_business_building_using_twitter.html