Twitter, Internet Business, Internet Retail

25th
MAR

Twitter – Can Twitter help boost your sales?

Posted by Michael under Online Retail, Social Media

According to Dell, 13,000 Dell outlet Twitter followers have helped the company grow $1m in revenue.

Technology company Dell is one of a number of leading retail brands that has latched on to social networking as a way of presenting a more friendly face to customers.

Named employees have Dell Twitter accounts that give the company a personality online and the company even plans to offer special deals to followers via tweet alerts.

In the UK, many big brands don’t have a Twitter presence even though many of them have embraced e-commerce as a sales channel. Internet business may be big business, but so far, retailers seem to just be dipping their toes in to what could be a huge ocean of internet business opportunity.

Not only are UK businesses slow to embrace Twitter, but they seem to lack the understanding of how to embrace this new market and the ability to target content.

Patricio Robles on his blog at econsultancy has researched the UK retailers at the cutting edge.

It’s not the names on the list but rather the brands that are missing that make the interesting reading. For instance Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Vodafone are conspicuous by their absence even though they dominate our shopping centres and rack up sales via their web sites.

Here’s a list of the leading UK brands and their followings on Twitter as of today:

ASOS: http://twitter.com/ASOS 1,860

ASDA: http://twitter.com/asda 112

CarphoneWarehouse: http://twitter.com/carphoneware 126

Debenhams: http://twitter.com/DebenhamsRetail 132

Dixons: http://twitter.com/dixonsonline 143

eBayUK: http://twitter.com/eBayUK 1127

Expedia: http://twitter.com/expediatravel 279

Figleaves: http://twitter.com/figleaveshome 1052

Ocado: http://twitter.com/ocadouk 117

TalkTalk: http://twitter.com/TalkTalkTips 417

Totting up the total, that’s just 6,650 followers for a dozen brands, or an average of 546. Compared to Dell ‘s twitter followers of 221,959, that is not a great deal of engagment.

Web 2.0 is taking the web more up close and personal for social networkers and presents an opportunity for businesses to interact with their customers more dynamically than ever before.
The customers obviously don’t mind, because they opt to follow on Twitter, so it makes sense for a business to open up the channel and communicate with someone who actually wants to listen to what they say.

According to the latest Neilson survey, Facebook is still the daddy of social networking with more than 65 million accounts – 228% up on last year. Twitter is second with more than 7 million accounts – almost a 1400% year-on-year increase.

Micro blogging on these networks is exploding in popularity and companies have to learn how to exploit these niche markets.

Dell’s $1 million from Twitter may not be a great deal of revenue compared to the rest raised by the company’s other sales channels, but think back – it wasn’t so long ago that few companies were making any money out of the internet, and look how that has changed.

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