Twitter, is it worth it?

28 replies
Hi warriors

If you're using twitter or have used it for Internet marketing

do you think it's worth the time? did it increase your sales?

do you recommend it?

or do you think it's a total waste of time :confused:
#money #twitter #worth
  • Profile picture of the author Pauly60451
    Many people, myself included, have successfully used twitter as a marketing tool. It does, however, require some effort.

    The over use of bots to spam and scam people on twitter has pretty much wrecked it for direct marketing but, with a little creativity and adding a human touch to the relationships you build you can still achieve pretty good success.
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  • Profile picture of the author Razputin
    I'm just getting into IM myself, so everything is in the "purely theoretical" stage for me. But social media marketing is the area I'm looking to get into and it would seem to me that, yes, twitter is worth it.
    A single retweet usually connects you to at least 100 people. And if you have something worth retweeting, chances are it will be retweteed mutliple times.

    It seems the trick is quality content. Period. It doesn't matter if the quality has nothing to do with what you are trying to sell (in fact it might be better to have a good amount of off-topic quality) because the fact is that it builds credit and likeabilty to you and thus what you are trying to sell.
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelcorvin
    Trying to make money directly from Twitter is going to be a long road to frustration. What Twitter works best for is for you to build a following in a niche and when you have solid new useful content on your site you post to get readers to your article....if however, in the article there are links to purchase a "useful" related product they may choose to do so. But make sure that not every Tweet is taking these readers to a page to purchase something. Sometimes people just want cool content. Prove yourself a trusted source of this content and you build a solid following...who trust your product recommendations from time to time.

    Michael
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    • Profile picture of the author chocobo
      Originally Posted by michaelcorvin View Post

      Trying to make money directly from Twitter is going to be a long road to frustration. What Twitter works best for is for you to build a following in a niche and when you have solid new useful content on your site you post to get readers to your article....if however, in the article there are links to purchase a "useful" related product they may choose to do so. But make sure that not every Tweet is taking these readers to a page to purchase something. Sometimes people just want cool content. Prove yourself a trusted source of this content and you build a solid following...who trust your product recommendations from time to time.

      Michael
      We did it on twitter, cpa + cpc is okay
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  • Profile picture of the author Anotherdesignteam
    I've personally never had any success with Twitter but I think it works best if you're trying to establish yourself as authority within the niche.

    It's definitely a great way to interact with your followers and get your posts read fast + commented on (it's quite personal which I do like).

    However I doubt you'll make tons of money off it without all ready having a substantial business base.
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  • Profile picture of the author internetcrusaders
    If you do it without using Bots and if you put in effort, it will pay you back
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  • Profile picture of the author mickyboy73
    Twitter is a great platform which can be used to attract an audience and then 'guide' that audience to your content which is on other sites such as your blog, YouTube Artiles etc.

    Using it in that way you can have some great success with Twitter.

    You can sell directly from it but you will need very focused and enthusiastic followers to do that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chri5123
    Yes, as others have said - if done correctly or at least you put a bit of effort into Twitter it can make some very good money. However it does take time to build a community in my experience.

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Mary Wilhite
    If you invest time in it and really establish relationships and connections with people in your niche then it can be good.

    When you communicate with others there genuinely then it can serve you well.

    Think about all the celebrities there who's got millions of followers and who's every tweet is read. Or maybe about the story of an author who wrote a novel in twitter one tweet at a time.

    However, if you do it haphazardly, just add anybody and send purely offers, then I think nothing good will come out of it.

    Best regards,

    Mary
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  • Profile picture of the author joshcoffy
    I personally use Twitter as a TRAFFIC MACHINE to send people to my blog and Facebook so I can PERSONALLY connect with them on there!

    I gained 3,526 target niche followers in about two months and drove several thousand visitors to my site
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    • Profile picture of the author DrPaul
      Originally Posted by joshcoffy View Post

      I personally use Twitter as a TRAFFIC MACHINE to send people to my blog and Facebook so I can PERSONALLY connect with them on there!

      I gained 3,526 target niche followers in about two months and drove several thousand visitors to my site
      Agreed,

      Twitter can be used to generate well targeted traffic, but you have to broaden your targets.

      If I'm running an advertising campaign for a client I will tweet their followers, links to their commercials on youtube, but will also use a like gate on facebook to capture user data.

      I also recommend that they fully interact with their users with Tag campaigns as well as with direct personal replies to tweets @ them.

      The key is to be interesting and interactive, on a broad range of topics, not just the consumer products the client offers.
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  • Profile picture of the author kimjox
    It requires a lot of effort as the conversion rates are too small .
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    As long as your twitter followers are targetted you will have success
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  • Profile picture of the author OrganicSR
    It all depends on your niche of the web, what your website offers, and if your trying to sell something or just have a popular news and article site. In my experience with computer hardware online retailing websites it hasn't had much value, but then again I never really had time to put a whole lot of effort into it because most of my time was spent link building and optimizing the on-page factors.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan J
    Social Networking is dominating the internet nowadays, so yes I would say its worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author vince04
    I'm on this process and I'm using a tool to gain my followers. Most of my followers are also into internet marketing. But they can help as a front that real people will follow you back. So it really depends on how you gonna handle it. Just make sure you're not tweeting on promotions every minute. Just keep it natural twitter account.
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  • Profile picture of the author Suthan M
    For me,

    Social media traffic that works for most of my niches are those paid ones.

    It takes persistence, time and effort to do it for free using Twitter, so unless you have a a lot of time, and not looking at scaling up fast and easy, i say dont do it and go for email marketing and PPC.
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    • Profile picture of the author James Hussey
      Absolutely, but you have to use it intelligently. My wife (who is a newbie at this) sent 3,000+ visitors to her new blog with one Tweet.

      I talk more about that here.

      What's silly is that she had less than 100 followers at the time, but I lay out exactly what she did and what she was thinking (it was easy to interview her, lol).

      Honestly, up until just a few months ago, I would have said Twitter was a waste of time or just to automate it all - I've made thousands from Twitter since that time. It's definitely worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hostpany
    It's worth it but you're going to need to know the secret strategy.
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  • Profile picture of the author bajakan
    I have twitter wired up to the blogs that I post in, the posts flow automatically to facebook and twitter. I think it is a good extension of your regular strategy and doesn't take any time to get a few hundred followers on either site.

    Those then drive repeated visitors to your site, people that wouldn't check your blog but will click on a headline from twitter and then read your blog. I don't make any money directly from twitter though it does provide a decent base of people you can freely market to.
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  • Profile picture of the author gauvion
    Originally Posted by Pixel Minisite View Post

    Hi warriors

    If you're using twitter or have used it for Internet marketing

    do you think it's worth the time? did it increase your sales?

    do you recommend it?

    or do you think it's a total waste of time :confused:
    I just started with it myself. I'll keep you posted how I do.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary Ning Lo
    Twitter is a social network..

    So to be successful you need to be social..

    Yes using bots and spamming will work but in the long run it's about building a relationship with others.

    Cheers,

    ~Gary
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  • Profile picture of the author MattVit
    Give yourself a head-start and buy some followers. Only buy from websites that ask for your username/password and use the Follow Back method (where they automatically follow a bunch of people, and those people follow back). Any other method shouldn't be trusted. First-page results in Google are usually the most trustworthy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ashley Edwards
    If you're looking to get on Twitter just to make money, you're in the wrong headspace. Sure, you can market and eventually make money by using Twitter, but this channel is all about relationships. If your main purpose is to sell, people are going to see right through that.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Evans
      Isn't a role of an IMer to build relationships to ultimately make money?

      Twitter serves two roles.

      You can throw leads to randoms looking for your product or service. If it looks tacky or obvious, it makes no difference since if you are pumping out tweets in bulk there's always going to be takers. What's more you don't have to tarnish your own image by doing so if you know how to do things correctly.

      On the flipside, there's relationship building (to sell) to build trust to market to a "list".
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  • Profile picture of the author jworks
    "Twitter, is it worth it?" I think it depends on your goals.

    Use twitter and other socialmedia to promote blogs, definitely worth it.
    I have used twitter to connect with website users, which resulted in more frequent visits and eventually sales.

    Just opening an account and getting as many followers as possible, it doesn't work. Directly promoting products doesn't work either unless you have REAL followers who repect you.
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  • Profile picture of the author fm1234
    posted by MattVit:
    Give yourself a head-start and buy some followers. Only buy from websites that ask for your username/password and use the Follow Back method (where they automatically follow a bunch of people, and those people follow back). Any other method shouldn't be trusted. First-page results in Google are usually the most trustworthy.
    What is the point of this? I see these accounts that have tens of thousands of followers, who themselves follow tens of thousands of people ... but it's really not "following" at all, is it? What is the point of spending money on building a high follower count, if the followers couldn't care less what you post?


    Frank
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  • Profile picture of the author mickyboy73
    There is a really good benefit of Twitter..... Getting links to your site AND making sure your new content gets spidered.

    Through testing I found that it takes the Google bot less than 5 seconds to find my latest Tweet which it will then follow the link in that Tweet directly to my new content. Many people overlook that aspect of Twitter.
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