Does Twitter help with sales/traffic?

[olimits7]

Hi,

I just created an account on Twitter for my ecommerce website; as of now I have 0 followers but hopefully that number will grow...hahaha.

Anyway, I was wondering from people who have a Twitter account for their ecommerce site:

1. Did sales or traffic increase to your website due to your Twitter page?
2. How many current followers do you have on Twitter?
3. What methods did you use to promote your Twitter page and get people to follow your Tweets?

Thank you,

olimits7

[baliwebdesign]

I do not have a ecommerce website but I've sold some CB products via twitter

[digitalv]

I know this scenario has happened for ecommerce customers of my clients as well. New customer sees a helpful tweet about a product and notices the Tweeter's username is likely a store name. Checks them out and buys.

Yes, but how did they see that tweet unless they were already seeking you out, or were referred indirectly by an existing customer who was following you? My point wasn't to say that no one ever gets business from social media, it's just that from a marketing standpoint social media is more of an extension of 'word of mouth' than an actual marketing tool.

[lorax]

>> more an extension of word of mouth than an actual marketing tool

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. :) I think of Twitter can be a powerful and profitable marketing tool.

>> they were already seeking you out

They don't need to follow you to see what you tweet about. There are multiple ways for someone to read what you post without having to follow like Google SERPs, Twitter Search and other Tweet search & filter tools, and retweets (which are more like word of mouth), etc. Seeding a tweet with keywords and product names as hash tags is a common tactic.

[Petrogold]

I know some one in Dubai using TW running a ecommerce restaurant supplying all morning supplies including BF drinks etc. now got 18 MV to supply on time makes million of AED. How? Folks any guess?

[lorax]

@Petrogold - I'm sorry but I need some clarification on those terms to be sure I understand you. What are TW? BF? MV? AED?

[olimits7]

Thanks ssgumby I will give that a try!

I've seen some twitter product feeds that post from API; has anyone setup their website to post to Twitter through API?

I'm not to familiar to how the Twitter API works; what would be the process to create a product feed and posting it to Twitter through an API?

Thank you,

olimits7

[mark_roach]

Posting to twitter is pretty straightforward from a program. The following few lines of PERL do the job

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $api_url = q http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml];
my $login="Your Logon";
my $password="Your Password";
my $tweet="Text of your Tweet";
my $req = POST($api_url => [status => $tweet]);
$req->authorization_basic($login 
 => $password);
# Make the request
my $res = $ua->request($req);

[edited by: lorax at 10:58 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2010]