Jon Burgess

The cost of Twitter? I was thinking, since I went another day with no hits to my sites from my Twits, how much is this whole twitter thing costing me?

Well… Twitter seems to be one of the slower sites I have ever been on, but it doesn’t take that long to post a twit… from login- to typing, to re-reading your post, before pushing the button… I’d say my average is 1 minute.

What does 1 minute cost me???? Well, I bill by the hour, $82-90 an hour… so my minute costs me (82/60=$1.36).  So every Twit I make is $1.36, or more…..

$1.36 is a soda, or a candy bar, or maybe a very small cup of coffee, not really that much.  BUT, in the internet that could be a TON.  For instance, I sell banner ads for 1 penny on my site.  Click throughs are not high, maybe 2%, so you would pay $0.50 per click.  I buy clicks in PPC platforms. I like to optimize the targeting of my clicks, so they tend to be higher per click than $1.36, but I know those are people that are very targeted, not Twitter look-e-loos.  On other sites I get clicks for $0.05, so that means I can get 27 clicks for that $1.36.

Twitter could be a whole lot more expensive than Free when you look at it that way.

I got a new follower,  this guy, http://twitter.com/Zen_Is_2_Now.  Now he actually seems like his is in my general industry, so maybe I’ll get some hits….. So I took a look and he is following 4,707 and has 4,303 followers.  Now, I’m not sure, but if you follow that many people, is it even possible to actually “Follow” that many people.  What is the point? is my real question….  I have about 80 friends in Facebook, man, it is hard to follow 80 people you actually know.

Second, my Zen budy has posted 1,041, so he is way more expert about Twitter than I am.  So that got me to thinking, what are some averages of posts?

Guys I’m following.

These guys are in the Media Business…
Leo Laporte (King of Twitter in my mind), he has 132,907 followers and has twitted 2,375 times.
Website Magazine, 3,727 followers, 1,035 posts.
Hugh Hewitt, (He is the king of talking about Twitter on his show) 12,308 followers, and 590 posts.

John McCaine - 919,681 followers, only 487 twitts…. now, he ran for President, and he only got to 487.

Me… the original author of the 12 Days of Twitter… 43 posts.

We got one hit out of Twitter yesterday.   I lost a follower; they probably thought my stuff was not targeted to them.

Other things I noticed about Twitter. We have been talking for a number of years about Web 2.0, and about being more open, or getting your “skin in the game” with the use of blogs.  I was reading something our competition did yesterday, where they used Twitter to exclaim to the world that their newsletter had spelling errors.

Hey, sorry about the two incorrect spellings in this months newsletter. We had a college Professor proof it!!! Not good!

Clearly, going 2.0 should NOT be about pointing out your errors, it should be a way to mitigate or address mistakes that are brought to you by the customer.  You should be following your comments and blogs, and quickly reply to customer’s concerns, not point out your problems if they never noticed.

Twitter Harvesting - I think it is pretty apparent, that Twitter is going to be harvested by the spammers.  I have received a number of emails about joining other peoples Twitter and I have gotten “spammed porn” followers in my followers group. Seems to me, if Twitter isn’t smart, and clean, like “Facebook” seems to be they will end up where “MySpace” has headed, the gutter.

Ok, I got 4 news followers, but 3 of them were porn links, and one was my brother.  The moral of the story, once PORN gets ahold of a website, it is all over.

With the Inland Empire economy and employment struggling, it seems like many organizations have been hit.  Our local chapter of the American Advertising Federation, Inland Empire, has been hit with a loss of membership.  We have been members for a few years, and with the decline in membership, I thought that it was time for me to lend a helping hand.  So I offered to take the Membership Chair position.

So, today I was officially announced.

The 2009-2010 AAF-IE Board:
* John McCarthy of WebMetro is President
* Victoria Seitz of Cal State San Bernardino is Vice President and Education Chair
* Theresa Mesa of Mesa Design House is Treasurer
* Eddie Gonzales of mUrgent is Programs Chair
* Jon Burgess of Red Fusion Media is Membership Chair
* Julie Wright of El Dorado Broadcasters is Secretary
* John Barry of the Art Institute, San Bernardino is Public Relations Chair
* Mark Landon of The Landon Agency is ADDYs Chair
* Andrew Wilkin of AndrewWilkin, LLC is Immediate Past President

No hit yesterday, seems like it isn’t a supprise anymore.

Has anyone noticed how slow Twitter seems to be? And how often the style sheets don’t load.

Up to 17 followers.

12 Days of Twitter, suspended actions for the weekend.  Instead I lived in the real world…

if I had twitted, this is what you missed; I took the kids to the park, I mowed the lawn, I cleaned the garage, I talked to the neighbor, I drank some Coors Light, I watched some TV, took the family to church, went to lunch with my parents, went back to my parents house, played Wii(on Grandma’s Wii) with the kids, tested my BMI on Wii(22), killed some Zombies, went home, played with the kids, hopped on the computer, got an email from Congressmen Jerry Lewis’ PR guy who wants to link to my InlandEmpire.us site….. went to bed.

Ok - so NO hits over the weekend from Twitter.  I did get one new person to join my followers.  I also just started following an old friend.

As for this blog, this guy stole my feed from post number 4 -  so Twitter Hits Zero, stolen feed One.

Twitter… 3 posts, zero hits.

Ok, I joined Digg; I think that will give me a bigger boost than twitter.  It is becoming fairly apparent that the crowd that is using Twitter is mostly venting.  There is very little in the way of good content, or content that you WANT to know about.  It is all a passive, not related to anything, pile of content.  The internet, for business is really about demand, not supply.

I can supply as many twits as I want, but who wants it?

When I demand something, I “Google” what I want, and I get it. 

I live in a new neighborhood, and it seems like there are more door-to-door salesmen.  But, when they knock on my door, I have to stop what I’m doing, get up, and tell them, I wasn’t looking for them, or wanted them, or even need to continue the conversation.  That is how I am beginning to feel about Twitter… I just don’t have time.

I put three posts up yesterday.  My posts for the day, the California Welcome Center, Inland Empire, zero hits. My post about “parting like the 1920’s”, zero hits.  And finally, I gave away my “CLIENT ONLY” newsletter to the world, what a deal, zero hits.  I did garner one hit to my InlandEmpire.US site, which I didn’t post about yesterday, so that is one real hit, maybe a day old, but I will take it! 

I did get someone to sign up, so I’m now up to 15, whoops, they already left, back down to 14.

On the Not Twittering Front… I sent out our newsletter, to 274 clients, and we had 60 opens with in one hour.  But the more notable thing, we had 2 downloads of our “client only” special whitepaper, from NON-CLIENTS.  Now, the offer was to get “The Manager’s Guide to Running a Company Website” for free (regularly $24.95), with the use of a coupon.  Now, the coupon was only in the email, so… that clearly means, that at least two of my clients forward on my client-only newsletter to other people.  And 2 of those other people downloaded my special whitepaper.

Recap DAY 2
Twelve Day’s of Twitter: Day 2 - Score 1 hit, and one new follower who then chickened out.
Client-Only Newsletter - 2 NON-clients downloaded my Client-Online Whitepaper.

So, I posted 3 twitter messages yesterday.  I checked my stats, 1 click, but that was mine, so no clicks.  But, my blog post did get a comment, so that is a bonus.

As I have looked around the web, there are reports that as many as 11% of people us Twitter, or Twitter like products.  That seems a bit high, so I’m going to find the hard data.

I will get a couple of posts up today, we will see what happens.