Business of Social Media

At the SME Conference North West on Thursday, we had a very interesting presentation from Chi Chi Ekweozor of realfresh.tv in Manchester about the increasing use of social media in business. At the end of that I asked the audience, mainly smes, how many of them used various social media. Bearing in mind that it is a bit difficult to be accurate counting hands when you are standing at a podium chairing a conference, I think the split was roughly;
- had a website - 90%
- had a blog 40%
- used Twitter 30% (that is just a few fewer hands than for a blog).

I found that very interesting. Like many people of my generation I find Twitter somewhat alien, and struggle to find a business purpose apart from customer service. A Blog I can understand more as a sort of informal newsletter. What this showed me is that Twitter use is already higher than I imagined, and there is a possibility that it is already more imbedded in business than is clear to the late majority/laggards of the business world.

Certainly it makes me think again about the use of Twitter. And I think you should too.

I am wondering about Twitter as an interactive tool. Would it have been useful to have had a Twitter feed at the conference? Could we have got feedback on what was going well, what was overstaying its welcome? (nothing I think, but how to be sure). Could I have taken questions that way? What about use in training courses?