This week's question came from Jessica and it's a VERY important question every business owner needs to know the answer to.

Jessica asks
"With a small business, I don't have time to constantly monitor twitter for what people are saying about my business. I. e. When someone twitters something negative about Vodaphone there is someone monitoring to counter the criticism all the time. I don't have these resources, so is there a risk in using twitter where being time poor means not having the time to address any negative comments and therefore no one to counter twitterers false or damaging comments (if they choose to make them)?"

 Unfortunately what many business owners don't realise is  that it doesn't matter whether you have a Twitter account or not, people can still make false or damaging comments about your business.  The good thing is that they can also rave about you, and they can ask their friends for recommendations that might be relevant to you.

The risk with not using Twitter is that you don't see the false or damaging comments, or the positive ones, or the ones that could bring you business. So you can't do anything about them.

And it takes less than 5 minutes a day to monitor what is being said on Twitter to see if people are talking about your business or about things that are important to your business.

 I ran a test through my demo account, which has no friends and no followers,  to show you what I mean. See what happened ...

 I posted a couple of Tweets about antiques in Brisbane.

Here are the tweets

Then I went and did a couple of searches.  One for Wallrocks and one for antique furniture in Brisbane

Here are the results.

This one is for a search any Tweets containing the word  "wallrocks"

This one is a search for any tweets contain the words "antique furniture brisbane"

Those two searches took be less than 20 seconds to do and I can set them up to happen automatically and send me an email every 24 hours with the results.  No results = no email.

If these two tweets were from a real potential customer would you have wanted to miss them?

And notice that someone already retweeted one of them even though my demo account has NO friends or followers.

Even if you never want to send a single Tweet, follow a single person or have a single follower I can't think of ANY business who should not have a Twitter account if only to monitor what is being said that is important to their business.

It takes 5 minutes to set up, costs nothing, and if nothing is said that matters it will take no time at all to monitor. 

Why wouldn't you do it?

Who has got new business just from monitoring what is being said on Twitter?  Tell us what happened in the comment box below.

If you want more information about how social media can impact on your business get the Social Media Acid Test Report here

Ready to implement a social media strategy that will work for your business? Check out the next SMART Business Networker Social Media Training Programs here.. 

 

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