Freelance Business Writing

I recently wrote an article about my experience with Twitter. I thought I would share the main points here.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Twitter has lately come to be considered an effective marketing tool for business. Much like Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites, Twitter is seen as a way for businesses to connect on a personal level with their customers and prospects.

Although a small, home-based freelance writing business has very different marketing needs than other product-oriented businesses, I decided to give Twitter a try.

I lasted a week.

I chose to follow a few others, just to get started. But the constant barrage of tweets from these few people wore me out after just a couple of days. There were topics of interest, but so much information that I couldn’t possibly take it all in.

What was more disconcerting was the reciprocal following of people who had no interest in what I was saying. I followed a couple of big businesses, just to get an idea of what they were doing from a marketing perspective. They quickly began to follow me, even though I had contributed nothing of value in my tweets. Although masked as a social initiative, these companies clearly had no interest in a two-way conversation. They simply wanted to get the word out about their business.

Another challenge with Twitter? The word length. It is probably an occupational hazard, but I cannot manage to say anything of value in 140 characters or less. Yes, I know you can link your blog posts into your tweets to spread your wisdom to all of the interested Twitterati, but I have enough trouble keeping up with my blog, never mind tweeting about everything I write and then maintaining some level of conversation about it.

No, Twitter marketing is not for me. I would suspect it is not really suited to any sole proprietor.  There is too much noise in the Twitter universe. Those of us who run our own small businesses do not have nearly enough time to filter out the meaningless babbling and reveal the really useful information.

For those businesses who have managed to make Twitter work as a marketing tool, kudos.

For the rest of you, don’t feel bad. Time is in short supply for those of us who operate our own businesses. Why waste it reading utterly useless drivel, like: “Added sugars - think sodas and candy bars - fill you up with empty calories and may lead to nutritional issues” (who knew?) or “Austin is a completely different city when you’re not hungover”? I think we can all live without that kind of insight.

As for marketing, it may be better to expend your limited resources on other online marketing initiatives. More on those in future posts.