Good reasons to add twitter to your marketing plan

A recent article by Chris Crum of smallbusinessnewz.com compared some of the good and bad of twitter marketing. While it can always be improved upon, the reality is that twitter is another marketing channel to use. The reasons to use it are valid:

• People "opt in" to follow you, so your audience is targeted
• Social networks are taking over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one.
• Twitter is growing rapidly.
• Can be a great channel for customer service if you maintain it.
• Make news announcements on one channel
• Lets you interact directly with the public and increases brand awareness
• Real-time search is going to rise to demand 

While the article mentions another benefit, I dont belive this to be true. It is just an experiment and does not constitute a true picture of brand value: "Look at how Skittles.com grew its traffic by 1332% in one day by switching to a Tweet stream." - This may be true, but the reasons for the gain in traffic are not sustainable. It's undeniable that twitter is here to stay and at the least, you should test it the waters, but whether or not twitter is an effective marketing tool for your business will depend on your ROI and how much effort is put into your own twitter campaign. Follow Steven Alig on twitter.