2008 November 02 | Art Licensing Blog

Twitter – how can it help your business?

If you read my blog regularly, you might recall me being “All a-twitter about Twitter” — the social networking site that asks, “What are you doing?” but limits you to a 140 character response.

Fellow artist Laura Bray decided to conduct what she called “The Great Twitter Experiment” — taking a very methodical approach to using Twitter and trying to guage if and how it might be helping her business. As the busy mom of a pre-schooler, time is of the essence! Here is what she did (copied with permission from her blog):

I have an account and frankly, I didn’t think it was working for me. At least not in sales numbers or even as a networking tool. But I’ve decided not to judge something before I give it a fair shake. So, this week, I’m conducting The Great Twitter Experiment. I am devoting 30 minutes a day to marketing on Twitter. That’s the ONLY place I’m going to market this week. And I’m tracking my results. For example, I’m going to Twitter about new items I post to my Etsy shop. Just before I Twitter, I will look at the number of views on the item. Then I’ll post the item link on Twitter, wait for about 10 minutes and then look at my views again. During the 10 minutes I wait to collect data, I’ll be adding people to my list to “follow” and will be supporting my fellow “tweeters”. I’m breaking the daily 30 minutes into 3 ten minutes chunks, at different times of the day, so that I can see if the timing plays a role in my numbers. I know this all sounds very scientific and particular, but it’s not. As a stay-at-home mom, who is trying to run an online business, I need to know which online networking venues work the best for me so that I can use my very limited wisely.