Canterbury Times 27th March 2014: SMEs should resist buying advertising space from Twitter
Small is beautiful in business. That’s official. Twitter says so.
The micro-blogging site revealed 63 percent of its Twits follow a small or medium size business to show their support, while most users (85 percent) say they feel “more connected” to that company after following it.
Followers feel an “emotional connection” to smaller brands, according to the study of 500 users.
As a regular Twit and having just been nominated small businesswoman of the year, this made for pleasant reading — until I read on.
It turns out Twitter is on a schmooze offensive to get SMEs to open their wallets and spend on ads in the wake of its share sale last November. Twitter is opening advertising to small UK businesses for the first time.
Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends will soon be added to our social media lexicon.
“If you can Tweet, you can advertise on Twitter – all you need is a Twitter account and a credit card,” says a Twitter executive.
SMEs, those splendid people that give Twitter a warm and gushy feeling, will only have to pay for the ads that people engage with.
Thanks for the compliments. We love you too Twitter. But part of the reason people support their SMEs is they don’t ram brands in people’s eyeballs when they’re chatting happily on social media. SMEs are best to keep their tweets and followers real and leave the ad spend to the big boys. Because as they say, small is beautiful.
Tweet me @julesserkin
Email: jules@pressupgroup.com
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