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Tim Peter Thinks

Is Twitter an e-commerce driver?

Twitter, a commerce engine? Interesting. My fear is that ideas like this reflect a return to interruption marketing, devaluing what Twitter (and its ilk) provide. Admittedly, folks would have to opt to “follow” your offers. But, are you prepared to make it worth their while?

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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  1. Hi Tim,

    I’m doing a follow up post shortly with Ma.gnolia’s Todd Sieling which will cover how to Twitter as to not piss off your readers (limit your number of tweets and only make them really important).

    I was thinking also that it would make sense to have a couple different Twitter accounts (perhaps one per browser?) one would be your close-knit friends and what they’re up to, and one for subscriptions to businesses – whether they’re Web 2.0 services/software notifications which can be important if you’re a heavy user of, say, web-based software or if you really do want to be updated with deals…hey, who knows. That’s the great thing about Twitter is it’s optional, there’s no way for people to send you unsolicited messages like with email spam and direct mail. I like your idea of interruption marketing, which I have always cringed at regarding social networking. Who wants the Pepsi product rep to sit down at your high school lunch table, right? So yes, it’s about having a really good reason for people to subscribe and making sure that every Twitter post is important or somehow beneficial to the subscriber/”follower.”

    Linda Bustos
    -GetElastic

  2. Great points, Linda. I’ll look forward to the Ma.gnolia piece. Should be good to read.

    I guess the main thing that I question with Twitter as a marketing medium is the number of folks who:

    1. Receive tweets as text messages; and
    2. Pay to receive texts

    I would think that these items would limit the available universe of readers and/or piss them off if they didn’t consider both the interruption and the cost of the interruption when they subscribed. Of course, the upside is that they’d likely represent your most loyal customers. Like anything, I suspect it can be done well. The folks who don’t take the time to do it right, though, are probably creating more challenges than they’re solving for their customers.

    I’ll check out the interview with Todd when it’s up.

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