How to Start a Business

A bit of controversy is occurring here at The Entrepreneur School. Is it a battle of young (See Erik and Jacob’s blogs) verses old (See Jim’s blogs)  or a battle of the naive verses the experienced?  It remains to be seen and we need you to help.  SEE BELOW.

Read the last 3 or 4 blogs at The Entrepreneur School Blog and look below post to the questions.

Is this True of Twitter:

Or This:

Calling readers of our blog, the blogging community, Twitter users, Twitter Preneurs, ect… to help.  If you know of others who have been successful or have experience with the questions below then get them to respond.

So please respond with FIRST HAND accounts of your experience with Twitter in the following ways:

In the positive:

• Do you run a successful cash flowing business with Twitter?
• Do you run a online business where Twitter has verifiably helped you win customers?
• Do you run a different kind of business where marketing with Twitter’s has increased sales, brand awareness, market share, etc…?
• Have you had any experience with Twitter that resulted in an increase of the bottom line?

In the Negative:

• Have you tried to start and run a business with Twitter and it failed?
• Have you tried using Twitter for increased customers or revenues and it been a complete waste of time?
• Have you used twitter for any purpose involving marketing and it resulted in nothing?

Please respond and let us know of your experience.

Thanks,

Jacob

The Entrepreneur School

Related posts:

1. Twitter for the Entrepreneur
2. Constant Contact Press Release Features The Entrepreneur School
3. Twitter Business Idea
4. End of Mass Broadcasting … Fragmentation and the Entrepreneur
5. The Entrepreneur School Programs and Costs

 

1 Comment

1.   Chris Barber   |  Thursday, 17 September 2009 at 7:09 am

   Twitter is a great way to reach more people that have similiar interests. I think the most positive aspect of social media is that it is free and easy to use for small business entrepreneurs. If you have a new product there are now many free marketing levers you can pull utilizing social media. This enables the small business entrepreneurs to be able to compete with the big dogs as well as get market awareness for their product without investing heavily in the old media marketing venues of newspapers, magazines, and television. You can test the market for free!

   So while Twitter helps enable a business to get more customers, I don’t think a business can thrive for very long with Twitter as its main source of value. The value of your Twitter account can be the amount of followers you have. But exactly how valuable are these followers? Are they people who would buy your type of products or services? How do you reach these followers effectively? If you sell to them too much they will be turned off so it is a fine line. It is a fine line because your followers have plenty of substitutes for your tweets and very low switching costs. It’s very easy to “unfollow” and each “unfollow” you have is a loss of value. Not to mention how easy it is to starting “following” your competitor.

   Why are your followers have more value than another Tweeter’s followers? Usually there is no differentiation between groups of followers. Likewise, there is very little differentiation between Tweeters so why should anyone follow you? What will stop from someone else contacting your followers and building a list of followers larger than you. A 13 year old can do it. I’d prefer a business that has a higher barrier to entry than “12 and under.”

   How do you get people to look at your tweets vs. competitors? With a large list of people you are following I only see posts from the last 3 minutes or so. How are you able to timely tweet so your product is more visible than your competitors?

   Lastly, what if twitter starts charging for accounts? What if twitter starts charging for follows? All of a sudden you don’t have a business because of margins. Twitter is your supplier and has sole control over you business. Utilizing only 140 characters at a time…