I’ve gotten 5 in about a month. While the number is small, I found an interesting bit of relevant data. I look at each follower’s profile to see the types of people who find my writing interesting. An author, a professor, and people involved with cell phone technology follow my work. I don’t have the data yet to see if Twitter has increased my revenue (I get paid on royalties that my work generates) but I am getting a better idea about who my readers are.

I view Twitter as a tool and the effectiveness of that tool depends on how you use it. If it is being used as a sales tool, results will be poor for those using it in some of the ways you highlight above – for posting inane information or hyper-promotion. The reason being there is no value provided to the reader. This mirrors results a sales person receives if doing the same thing with a prospect outside of the Twitter platform. Giving the prospect inane information or hyper-promotion will yield poor results for that sales person.

The potential I see to use Twitter effectively is to provide value to prospects by generating useful content that generates initial engagement with prospects. This engagement should be the beginning of the relationship, not the end, or replacement of a defined sales process.

It will be interesting to see how the sales field uses this tool.

Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t really see Twitter as a sales tool either. I think it can be used as an image builder, to get your name out, to connect with some people you might not otherwise meet, and to investigate some potential sales opportunities. I can certainly see where these can be valuable, but time consuming. The time issue vs. return on time invested is one of my biggest concerns.