'Twitter could kill your business' - web guru poses tough questions for social media users

It is easy to assume that Twitter and other social media platforms are a business necessity - rather than a business nicety - and fellow blogger, twitterer and prominent web guru Graham Jones has warned that businesses wasting time on such websites could destroy their businesses.

You can read what Graham Jones wrote by clicking here - and we were moved to comment to agree with his warning. It is true, social media can be a time hungry beast - but if you satisfy its craving with the sugar-fuelled equivalent of junk food then you will surely crash and burn. You have to be way smarter than that and as Graham says, knowing what your target audience look at online is key.

This is not really new was much as it is a timely reminder - target has always been King.

Let me explain how Morgan PR does it. We blog, twitter and are well LinkedIn (only ever did facebook as a personal thing, and ecademy was only a flirtation and bursting with spam-like people who do not know me but behave like they do!) and are very careful how we use each and only as part of a coherent marketing strategy.

In its simplest terms we use these tools to populate our permission marketing database - the members of which get our monthly newsletter. All the time we strive to offer them enough value that they continue to grant us permission and over time many become convinced of our considerable expertise and they become customers.

All this is done with analytics that show when you are doing it right and allow you to adjust your approach if you are making mistakes.

We have clients who found our blog on Google, or perhaps went to our website first. Or they Twittered with us or LinkedIn... then, in different journey times, they migrate across to become clients.

Of course, we don't just exist in cyberspace and many people follow us online after encountering us in the real world.

If you are in public relations or marketing, like us, competency in the social media people are discovering is in itself a terrific way to leverage the relationship and can ensure you are able to help more people than ever before - and in the difficult economic times we currently face, that is so vitally important.

Twitter means business - Morgan PR among the Twitter Elite in West Berkshire

Morgan PR Twitters - indeed you can find me on Twitter here - and we have been discovering for a little while that it is an effective tool for driving traffic here to this blog, but also to our website, for encouraging people to sign up for our newsletter and keeping our associates updated on our activities.

I guess we could be modestly impressed at being 157,508 out of almost two million Twitters busy enough to be assessed by Twitter Grader, a self congratulatory tool for those busy enough on the micro-blogging site to get noticed.

More interestingly, it checks out where you stand geographically, and we were somewhat amazed to discover we are within the Top 10 Twitter Elite in West Berkshire! Actually at number nine! We kid you not - and here is the really important part - every single Twitterer who makes into the top 21 locally is in business. No bored teenagers talking about the most amazing snowflake they have just seen - well, no teenagers! But definite evidence this is a business tool.

Honestly, it is a surprise that our modest efforts on Twitter warrant such recognition. If you want to be really impressed check out Graham Jones on Twitter, he is the Internet Psychologist and racks up a whopping 97.8%.

What it does reveal is that Twitter is still open to relatively early adopters who are prepared to invest the time and effort to make this service a key part of their marketing strategy; it takes committment and time too, but like LinkedIn, if you make the investment it will work.

Morgan PR meets a bright sales Star

It should go without saying that strategic alliances are a key part of any marketing strategy and I am indebted to one of our clients for suggesting, via LinkedIn that Morgan PR should meet with graduate sales specialists Star.

Today I met with the company founder Beth Lorraine and discovered a thoroughly fresh and reportedly successful approach to creating effective sales staff at a fraction of the cost of buying in the supposedly essential 'experience' that sales stars are deemed to require.

Star can find the right graduates for a business in need of sales staff and then works alongside the company to train them in the techniques and attitudes essential to effective selling, and it works.

While experience has its place, it can also bring with it bad habits and pre-conceptions along with that hefty salary. Graduates on the other hand are a relatively inexpensive blank canvas and those chosen by Star are positively chomping at the bit to serve and most importantly sell!

We look forward to working with Beth and Star in the future for as surely as some of her clients will need public relations help, I am certain some of our clients would benefit from a fresher approach to sales.

We're LinkedIn... are you?

Naturally a healthy online profile is important for any business and this is probably why I originally joined LinkedIn sometime last year... and then did absolutely nothing with it. With sites like this blog and our own website achieving a good profile within Google searches it was easy to dismiss what seemed to be facebook without the annoyance.

However, over recent weeks LinkedIn has hit the headlines repeatedly and more and more people were pinging me to ask if I would 'join their professional network in LinkedIn.

Perhaps most significantly the LinkedIn raised $53 million for a sliver of the business and promptly valued it at $1bn. Which sounds crazy, but this is no internet start up. The website boasts 23 million members and is growing by 1.2 million new members each month.

So I have been devoting a set time each day to building my profile and believe it is now really rather respectable, with a growing number of recommendations from clients and business partners and a healthy number of connections. What is fascinating though is the momentum that has built with relatively little effort and that continues to build my profile.

And don't dismiss LinkedIn as another MySpace or facebook, it is a business tool beyond its networking facade and allows for company searches. You can profile staff, establish churn and of course get introduced to the online movers and shakers within companies through your own burgeoning network. It is clever stuff.

Then there is Google, which has been invited to crawl LinkedIn and now happily returns my profile among the various hits when people search for 'public relations, newbury' and suchlike.

Freely offering expertise to the myriad of questions that are posted on the site is another excellent way to boost your profile and follows the same abundance model that we employ offline.

I have heard about the companies on LinkedIn who encourage their staff to spend a specified amount on time on the site every day, to ensure their business stays at the forefront of searches. I can see why.