Engagement Will Change American Businesses

TIME magazine featured Twitter on the cover of their magazine and used 3800 words to describe how “Twitter” will change American Business.  Yes, the Twitter company offers the most popular microblogging system for “What are you doing?” usage, but will they be the ones to dominate when it comes to offering a professional ENGAGEMENT System for business applications?  For example, if someone “tweets” your business asking “When do you guys close today?” and you don’t respond, then that is just as damaging to your brand as not answering phone calls !

Business engagement really needs a more flexible and complete set of features before it is ready to take on the tasks mentioned in the Times article.  But…  when twitter-like services are “ready for prime time”, then I believe their predictions are accurate.   So, it is my opinion that Time’s article REALLY should be titled; Ten Ways that Social Tools Will Change American Business.

Here are 4 of the important trends that were identified:

• Hyper-Local Marketing - Opt-in demographic data will allow zip code targeted messaging.  When mobile phones with GPS becomes more commonplace, geo-targetted marketing will be extremely accurate and dynamic.
• Making Old-World Advertising Work - business microblogging couples messages with mobile 2D barcode responses so that tracking when and where traditional advertising is seen, and when and where it is redeemed.
• New Ways to Get Consumer Data - having the ability to get immediate feedback about products and services is extremely valuable to businesses.  This feedback can also be associated with opt-in demographics information such as location, gender, age, purchasing history, etc.
• Expanding the Power of Micropayments - Many companies are beta testing a type of “alternative currency” using microblog messages that can be used to pay for purchases less that $25.   These would be encrypted messages or secure 2D barcodes which are scanned by a soda machine or a retailer to deduct money from a prepaid account.  This system might be of interest to the 20 to 30 million people in USA (over the age of 15) who do not have a credit card or bank account.  And… listen to this…  a formal bank study estimates that there are 20 to 30 million people without credit cards or bank accounts who earn more than 500 billion dollars annually and put it under their mattresses !  Now that sounds like an opportunity to give them a simple and secure way to carry and use cash !  mmm….

Click here to read the full TIME article.