MiHi Digital was a brand that to a large extent was born and grown on Twitter. For us it’s a big marketing tool and we firmly believe that this should, and could, be the case if you have a business operating in the South West; remember that the majority of businesses in our neck of the woods are family owned, meaning that when you’re tweeting someone you’re probably tweeting the person that can make decisions.

I can assure you that’s often not the case in larger cities where you can form a strong relationship with the marketing assistant, who unfortunately at the end of the day has no control or say over the purse strings, and therefore your chances of getting the business.

Whilst we’ve seen positive results, it is hard to ignore the amount of people who just don’t ‘get’ Twitter. From a time perspective for small businesses there’s only so many hours in the day, so spending it tweeting without understanding why or how is always going to seem like a drag, or even a waste of time, and Twitter knows this too.

The Twitter research

In a bid to understand those who don’t use the social media site, Twitter did some research. They discovered that 90% of people around the world can recognise the Twitter brand (that’s one hell of a lot of people!).

What puts people off Twitter?

They found that those who don’t use the site but know the brand (that little bird!) did so for two key reasons:

1.Many didn’t know what Twitter was for.

2.Others thought that if they were to use Twitter, they would have to Tweet every day (nobody likes an obligation!). It’s unclear whether they thought the little Twitter bird would force them to tweet about their lunch and dinner every day, but that’s what the research revealed!

How about those people that do use it?

Most people using Twitter said that they know exactly what it is for, and believe it is the best and fastest way to see what’s happening in the world (which after all is what it was created for).

And that’s the point they now want to get across; they want the world to know that Twitter is for seeing what is going on in the world. From breaking news to entertainment, sports to politics, that is what it is for.

They’ve kicked off their campaign with a couple of videos that focus on this purpose. Including clips of popular TV shows, sports, and politicians.

You can take a look at the videos here

But what about businesses?

Their campaign focusses largely on the world affairs angle, but that’s a completely different purpose to the one most small businesses will be using it for. Twitter for you should be used to create positive contact points that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Someone mightn’t be buying your service or product right now, but when they come to you want it to be your business that’s in their mind. You’re using Twitter to put it there. That’s your purpose.