Had a very interesting question come in yesterday in this comment from DesignGuy. He asks,
“In your Twitter-experienced opinion, do you think it would be a good place for a newsletter drive?”
As I said in response to the comment, my answer would be ‘yes’ and‘no’… it depends… and I promised to elaborate in a post, so here goes..
Social networks are all about building relationships – most people use them to network and make new connections and keep in touch with existing ‘real-life’ friends. So ordinarily, I’d be saying that using Twitter for purely ‘self-promotion’ purposes is a bit of a bad idea – unless you are socially adept enough to do it in such a way that you don’t abuse the trust people have placed in you and ultimately alienate people.
But this question is about a newsletter drive for an online magazine, so right there we’re in a different space…
Now whilst many commentators would rather ‘big business’ kept out of social media, just as many (as far as I can tell) people, myself included, like to follow companies – and in
particular, news services – so they can get the latest news as it happens. I’m not looking to build a personal relationship with them, so provided they tweet what I’m looking for – I’m happy.
So, whilst I wouldn’t recommend getting started on Twitter with a short ‘campaign’ burst – there are other better tools and strategies for that – there’s no question Twitter could work for you, provided you take a long term view.
The key thing to think about here is “Whose Twitter account is it?” If it’s in your name DesignGuy, then I’d be wanting to see interesting, fun and useful tweets most of the time, with no more than a light sprinkling of promotional tweets. If you do nothing but promote your company, ie. never engage with anyone and never show any personality, you’re likely to attract similar ‘followers’ who auto-followed you and probably aren’t actually ‘listening’.
On the other hand, if the account was set up as San Diego Metro, I’d fully expect a steady stream of headlines and links to the full article. And, personally, I’d have no problem with regular promotional messages into the mix. In this scenario, I think it’s reasonably safe to assume that your followers are receptive and ‘listening’ for some of the time – despite the fact that its a fairly one-sided relationship. You also have the option of naming the ‘voice(s)’ behind the tweets. This can add personality and improve engagement and interaction.
Look at this screen grab (click to enlarge) of CNET UK on Twitter (using Power Twitter).
To me, this is the perfect blend of useful information, engagement and fun – loads of personality, very ‘on brand’. This picture doesn’t show it, but they do @reply.
And finally… you mentioned ‘time’… I think you need to be disciplined here, but I’m the worst person to comment on that. I tend to stay away (from Twitter) if time is stretched, but that’s not the greatest of strategies. Better would be to create a routine of sorts. That may mean setting aside an hour a week, or 10 minutes a day etc. and it will almost certainly mean automating the bulk of the work. Notice that CNET UK’s tweets are coming from different sources – Twitterfeed and Twhirl. Twitterfeed is just one of many ways you can tweet automatically as soon as you publish a post – ie. no extra work involved. The Twhirl ones are the only manually generated tweets – and this particular page shows a higher % of these (of all tweets) than their average.
So – there it is – that’s my answer, but you can bet your life that there’ll be plenty of other “Twitter-experienced opinions” that will differ from mine. Perhaps I can persuade some of them to add theirs here.
Let me know what you decide to do DesignGuy – and thanks for asking. 
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I’m new to Twitter but I’m quickly beginning to understand why so many seem addicted. I run an ezine and use AWeber to announce new emails on Twitter and a WP plugin to announce new blog posts. Other than that Twitter is becoming a break from the day to day promotions. I’m still looking for that right balance but it’s nice to hear that not everyone is against a little business promotion mixed in with the socializing.
I agree social networking sites are good for getting your name out their into the community and great for SEO purposes as well.
Very good points. I have been meaning to join Twitter but have continually put it off. I’ll have to make the time to get around to it as I keep hearing about it everywhere I go.
Hi Global D.I.
) yeah – get in there! Probably best to use a real name though rather than your business name as is all about people and relationships. Hope to see you in there soon 
)
setting a twitter account a couple of weeks age for our company was certainly not the worst idea at all. But frankly, until today we did not know what is it about. after hours of research on this topic it was your article reading your that I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. thanx. a lot.
Yes, social networks are fo rbuilding relationships, but a lot of people have their own agenda. To take an example FaceBook (if I am not mistaken) has a group of 15,000 members who form a group to read The Economist. Don;t tell me that all of them entered the network just to build relationships. Profit in the form of gain to self is a driving factor in some/many/most cases.
As far as I see any group can be targeted for the newsletter. The only thing is that Twittern exchange information faster and more regularly by my reading. (What is the data on this?. Social Media Trader a blog from the US is scheduled to profile members of various social network sites or such information may already e available. It is best to decide which group to target based on the newsletter content, its purpose and the cost of promotion.