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That is very much the question lately. Here’s a quick answer, if you are not in the business of writing blogs, running special offers to clients, or are not really in the business of sending out information to a group of dedicated followers…Twitter is really not for you.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that Twitter had 4-5 million users. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace), which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million, however only 40% of users are retained. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1382%, Zimbio had a growth of 240%, followed by Facebook with a growth of 228%

What Does it Mean to My Business?

Again, if you are not really in the business of sending out information to a group of dedicated followers it doesn’t mean too much to you. However, if you are a media outlet like an online newspaper and want to send URL’s of the latest news posted to your site, than Twitter is perfect for you. If you are a business that operates in a similar manner, Twitter is perfect for you too.

Here is an example of a Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/owssupport 

This page shows a summary of the latest Twitter postings that we have put online. You can read them, but you need to become a member to become a follower and to receive updates to your own account. And of course you need to become a member to you’re your own account to Tweet to someone else.

Summarized Self-Gratification

These text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length really become nothing more than text messages. The power is adding a URL to the message so that you can expand on a topic. As you can image the BULK of people using this service have nothing much to say, or are shameless self-promoters of something, so choose who you follow wisely.

Just how much this helps your business is still to be determined. If you never have had much to say, no form of social media marketing will be helpful to you. If you do want to self promote, than Twitter is great for pushing information to followers in a timely fashion. You can add a “tag” to your post – for example: #webhosting – if you sell web hosting. This will help get you noticed by people searching for “webhosting” using Twitter or Twitter search at: http://search.twitter.com

The coolest feature is that all of this happens in real time – not even Google does that!

Social Media Marketing (Networking) is a buzz word that essentially mean promote yourself among friends or associates in order to build new or to enhance existing relationships. The ROI data regarding this activity is still out, but the more people participate, the greater the chance that both ideas and money will be exchanged. Just watch out for those typos!!!

Social Media Marketing could be good for your business if:

• You like to share your ideas and experiences.
• You like to ask other people questions about their experience.
• You are passionate about what you do and how you can help others.
• You like to learn about other industries.
• You like to stay connected to others.

Social Media Marketing could be bad for your business if:

• You are simply a shameless self-promoter.
• You intend to take and never give to others in the community.
• You just want to bad mouth others and promote yourself.
• You want to steal corporate secrets.
• You don’t wish to build relationships.

It doesn’t really get much more difficult than that. You can decide just how much or how little you wish to share or communicate. You can decide when you want to be involved and how often.

Social Media Marketing is a way to combine Content, Community, Communication, Commerce and Customer Support to an open audience or to a private group of people.

Ning is a provider of Social Network applications that are free. We decided that if we were going to talk-the-talk, that we had better walk-the-walk, and have added a social network just for our clients at: http://owsnet.ning.com

We choose to make this available by invitation only. The goal is to allow our clients to mingle and exchange ideas – the common thread being that they all do online marketing with us in some manner. We can now answer a question and have it benefit every one of our clients, so long as they accepted the invitation and have completed their profile.

Our wide array of clients, from B & B’s to Radiant Heat professionals, makes for an interesting mix of industries. Many clients share common online experiences, while others are looking to learn more to enhance their online presence. Social Media Marketing means that we don’t get in the way and provide a means for them to communicate and learn. Good stuff!

Well, you have built you site or redesigned your site on a recommendation from a friend or a cold call and you get hits but nothing extraordinary. You have done this all before and with the redesign comes less and less content. Your site looks sweet and you get compliments, but you’re not getting sales or leads. What’s wrong?

This is a question on the minds of many business owners, and, when confronted, the natural reaction is to make arguments as to why. You’ll make comparisons. You’ll draw analogies. You’ll give discounts. You know you are more expensive than other sites, but not by much and you have experience behind you. What do you do?

The truth is that many would be customers made a decision about the price your product should be… before they actually learned your price. In other words, their price was set before your price was revealed. They made a decision about what they were willing to pay before you told them what you wanted them to pay.

And that means that you could have changed their minds before they even saw the price. How do you fix this?

Your Unique Value

Your expectations about a product and it’s price or quality are shaped by your experiences with comparable things. So it’s very important to put yourself in your customers shoes. What would make you pay a little more for the same product? What services do you provide above and beyond the product price? What value does a relationship with you have versus that of your competion and how does it benefit your customer?

The look and surroundings of a product affect the perceived value of the product. Do you set the stage to help justify your pricing?

The words and attitude you and your customers take when describing the product affect the perceived value of the product.  

Keep things honest. Your value needs to be TRUE and not a scheme to trick people as to what the value is. If you set the wrong expectations, or build the wrong Image, or wield the wrong words, it will come back to bite you. After your customers buy, they’ll be disappointed. And that ultimately means you lose.

If you are considing ecommerce for your business, consider working with a web developer. Ebay and Amazon both have significant issues to contend with and technology limitations that cannot be ignored. Above all else it seems that the company policies and positions on how you can sell, what you can sell, and the “you are at our mercy” of buyers mentally, are good reasons NOT to use these services. Listing fees and monthly fees are on the rise, making the costs of these services comparable to those of developers who can offer you significant increases in functionality without all of the hoops to jump through.

Chris Crum of WebProNews put together a list of reasons why businesses are looking elsewhere to sell their goods beyond Ebay. Ebay in our opinion, as because the low rent district of ecommerce for years. We have had problems buying from credible buyers, and a lot of frustration in selling goods to anyone at any price.

The top ten things that sellers are frustrated with about eBay by Chris Crum:

1. Management
2. Feedback Policy
3. Small Businesses Get Shut Out
4. Lack of Communication
5. Payment Policies
6. Fees/Lack of Profitability
7. Unwarranted Account Suspensions
8. The Buyers Themselves
9. Glitches
10. Lack of Innovation

1. Management

Many of the negative comments (and about 98% of those have been negative) have pointed the finger squarely at eBay CEO John Donahoe who took office shortly before these changes came about. Some noted a significant decrease in stock since he stepped in as well. In fact, a BusinessWeek reader even pointed to a petition that has been created, calling for Donahoe’s termination.

2. Feedback Policy

This is really the one that is getting most eBay sellers fired up. Buyers can leave feedback on sellers, but sellers can’t leave feedback on buyers. Out of the sellers that I personally contacted (that got back to me), all but one of them agreed that eBay’s feedback policy, which changed in May, is their biggest frustration.

One seller responded, “Allowing buyers to give neg feedback w/o recourse. Without leverage i.e. return Negative feedback. This keeps ignorant buyers from learning how [to] work out differences – ‘expressing how they feel’. Mistakes are made. Some ‘new’ buyers just give Neg FB w/o contacting [the] seller about exchange[s], returns or refunds.” I have also seen people cite buyers’ lack of understanding about shipping costs leading to negative feedback.

Another respondent said: “The most frustrating thing about selling on ebay is the complete disregard of SELLER’s RIGHTS.” He then directed me to this site, which is dedicated to creating awareness about eBay’s policy changes, and illustrates the DSR system (pictured below). “The FEEDBACK SYSTEM Penalizes Sellers who do not have at least a 4.6 Rating in ALL 4 areas,” that seller noted. “I have been selling on ebay since 2002 and have NEVER had so much trouble with them!!!” I have an excellent record & I still get LOWERED SEARCH STANDING & HIGHER FEES!! THE SYSTEM IS NOT FAIR FOR SELLERS AT ALL ANYMORE!!!”

3. Small Businesses Get Shut Out

BusinessWeek’s article was about this very topic. It looked at a few small businesses that lost their ability to sell on eBay, in large part due to the feedback issue, but that is not the only thing affecting the little guys.

Another part of this is eBay’s deal with Buy.com, which some people indicate is prioritizing merchandise from that site over their own. Combine that with the charges that small businesses must incur for selling through eBay, and profitability slides. There seems to be a common theme resonating among sellers, saying that eBay has basically sold out. They’ve gone too corporate and are no longer appealing to the little guys.

4. Lack of Communication

Another common gripe is that the company will not communicate with sellers to their liking. If sellers have problems, they get the runaround. They get impersonal automated responses via email, or low-level employees if they make a phone call. They can’t get through to management. They can’t appeal their suspensions (which are often considered unjustified).

Another communication flaw some have cited is that once their account is suspended, they can’t even communicate with customers who may have already placed orders. This is not good for the buyer or the seller.

5. Payment Policy

Last month, eBay announced that they would no longer allow sellers to accept checks or money orders as payment. Well, sellers were not happy about this either. Most felt like that decision should be up to each individual seller. Many have chalked this up to the company simply wanting people to use eBay-owned PayPal.

Taking away options for payment can alienate some customers, and sellers know that and found the new policy unfair. eBay said they would accept PayPal, credit or debit card payments to the seller, ProPay, or “payment upon pickup” as possible payment methods. They claimed to update this policy to provide users with a more “secure checkout experience.”

6. Fees/Lack of Profitability

As I said, there is a lot of overlap in these and this ties into the small businesses getting shut out problem. But many users are having a hard time justifying paying the fees they must pay to use eBay as their selling platform. Fees cut into the profits they could otherwise be making by selling directly from their own store, or from another platform that doesn’t charge as much.

7. Unwarranted Account Suspensions

Apart from those who are seeing their accounts suspended based on their DSR, I have seen many claims that their accounts are deemed “security concerns” and suspended as a result, without any justification for this assessment. One person claimed their account was suspended for this reason when they had not even bought or sold anything through the site yet. They went to try to sell something, but their account was already suspended.

8. The Buyers Themselves

There seems to have been an increase in tension between buyers and sellers on eBay since their policy changes took effect. Buyers have been accused of lying to get away with cheating sellers by not paying for items while eBay does little to combat the problem. Others just don’t think they can reach the right audience with eBay. They consider eBay buyers to be the type that are looking for bargains, and for those looking to sell quality products at prices that aren’t necessarily discounted, will have a harder time selling those products.

9. Glitches

Some complain about technical glitches at eBay. A BusinessWeek reader mentioned a variety of them including store glitches, PayPal glitches, search glitches, DSR glitches, etc. Any company is bound to experience some hiccups from time to time, but those hiccups are going to be frustrating to users, and there’s not much that can be done about that other than trying to catch such glitches before customers do.

10. Lack of Innovation

Finally, some just don’t feel like eBay is doing much innovation anymore. There seems to be a general consensus that in eBay’s earlier years, the company was somewhat revolutionary and appealing to anybody who wanted to get rid of some “old junk.” As time has progressed, many sellers have become less impressed. eBay has made some acquisitions over the years like Skype and StumbleUpon, but these have had little if any impact on eBay the site.

The verdict is in. Flash is an SEO Killer for web sites.

It’s true that we have been saying this for years, but amazingly sites still continue to use flash for either part of their home page or worse yet for their entire site. Let’s face it, if flash was so great we would not see the “Skip to Enter” or “Enter Here” link at the bottom of the flash.

For a case in point, visit http://www.texasbestbarbequesauce.com  – Texas Best Barbeque Sauce is run by some nice folks. The product looks like a fine one and they really wanted a nice look for their site. They were featured on CNN Small Business (click here) as a real comeback story. Sadly, when they were bringing the product back in 2007 they decided to use flash for their entire website. The net result was that they could not be found under Texas Best BBQ Sauce because they were invisible thanks to flash and there was nothing for the Googlebots to spider (index) so that people could find them. I am hoping that by using Texas Best Barbeque Sauce in this blog as many times as I have that it might help matters a bit.

As online strategist John Lawlor said to Mr. Smith, “Your Web site is attractive but lost in space,” he says. “I couldn’t find you.” – thanks to flash.

So why do so many sites make this mistake? Many times a company feels that they are already a BRAND and therefore do not need organic search engine optimization since visitors will just show up anyway. They are also told that they need to look professional (as if only flash can provide this). Well this is simply not the case. For an example of how to use flash, please go to Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. I went as far as visiting their Vermont location last month…check out the high tech signage below.

Ben & Jerry's Low Tech None Flash Road Sign

Anyway, these guys know how to use flash to accent rather than take over the look of their site. They have textual copy with real hyper links on the home page. The flash is used for animation on the navigation and top header. And yes, they are a brand, so why did they go organic? Well they mostly likely learned what Mr. Reed Smith is learning now, that flash makes search engine optimization a nightmare. Not only is SEO a problem but frequent edits to home page copy, which is essential to SEO, is also hamstrung by flash. Google loves updated copy and flash doesn’t provide any of that. In addition, flash is difficult to modify and keep up on and requires a Flash developer to make modifications. That’s a cost that nobody needs.

I emailed Reed Smith, President of Texas Best BBQ Sauce, and volunteered our services to convert that old flash site into something a search engine like Google could really take advantage of. Mr. Smith said that he was on top of things however, and if he needs our services he will let us know. In any event, we are glad that he has sat up and taken notice and look forward to see what will happen next. I am jealousy of one things though, I wish I had as much PR as they have had as a result of being featured on CNN. That’s exposure that money (or pay-per-click ads) can’t buy!

In these uncertain times it’s hard to decide where to put your money, assuming you are putting your money anywhere, to market your company. If you are online, here are a few things to remember:

1. People buy only what they need and nothing more.
2. People are less likely to buy many items, but will still buy quality.
3. Comfort items sell.
4. Commodity items come down to price, regardless of service.
5. People “window” shop more and are less impulsive

Here are a few things you need to consider to keep sales coming through your site:

1. Put your best price online.
2. Email your customers to tap previous relationships.
3. Increase your quality of goods as well as selection.
4. Don’t ignore your primary business focus and feature it on your site.
5. Continue to solicit referral traffic from other sites.
6. Make shopping easier using a shopping cart system.
7. Reduce shipping costs as much as possible.
8. Hit the road and knock on doors to get new business. (success takes effort)

If you are thinking of finally putting a site online as your last, best hope to survive, don’t bother because your will not give it the time and attention it will need to be successful in the time allowed. Desperate acts lead to poor decision making.