Twitter can benefit business no matter how small
Simple ideas are often the smartest ideas and none moreso than the two examples we stumbled upon today. Who would have thought that a newsagent would have a use for twitter and what’s a Dry Cleaner Doing on Twitter anyway? You would think they both rely solely on local customers coming through their doors, so what benefit could there be in twittering to the world?
In the case of the newsagent we learned something new when we received a phonecall from him today regarding an article about twittering in a newspaper a few weeks ago. The newspaper’s article was about Stephen Fry’s twittering experience during his travels, and he was curious as to what all the hype was about. After we gave him a brief explanation, the newsagent thought it was a “brilliant idea” and he could use it to provide a service to his customers. When we asked how, he explained that many of his customers email or phone him asking when a particular magazine was delivered to his store, or if he knew of a local gardener or window cleaner. Equally, local gardeners, window cleaners etc., would drop cards into his shop looking to advertise their services in his shop window. Still puzzled about how twittering could help, he explained to us that it was often time consuming for him to contact individual customers by email, so he said that twittering would be be just like an electronic noticeboard for his email savvy customers and it would save him a lot of time.
We thought his idea was brilliant too. The newsagent is going to set up a twitter account and tell all his email customers that they can watch out for any news about his shop on twitter.
We wish him lots of success!
