When starting a three-part series on Twitter several months ago I vowed to prove that Twitter isn’t fading, it’s not just noise and that it is, in fact, good not just for big businesses, but smaller companies as well.

What happened? A bunch of people suddenly asked me to help them use Twitter to meet their business goals. I am now working with businesses, non-profits and professional associations every day, coaching them or tweeting on their behalf and achieving objectives. While a few months isn’t nearly enough time to provide thorough case studies, I can report immediate results through Twitter. Such as:

– A group supporting environmental causes wanting to add new chapters asked me to launch a Twitter campaign less than three months ago. In the first week, they received a request for a media interview. They are now quoted regularly in national publications, building their brand awareness. A new chapter is about to form in a coveted area because tweets about the group caught the interest of a Twitter follower there. More chapters are on the horizon — thanks to Twitter and the dedicated followers it can generate.

– A writing coach hoping to expand his business is now connected to a large number of young, inexperienced writers and is now connecting to his ideal client — executives of large companies interested in writing books.

– A start-up that is licensed to sell a safety product in Georgia wants to expand its market. In just two weeks, response to the company has been remarkable.

It’s too early to document the details and name these groups/companies, but that day will come soon enough. These clients — and others — are already convinced of the power of Twitter to target those they most want to reach. More important, they have learned that the road to success is through building relationships and sharing valuable information with their followers.

That’s a sound business strategy anywhere and Twitter is just the tool to help them make that happen.

Compete and comScore, Web analytics firms, both released figures showing a drop in average monthly Twitter visitors from July to December 2009. Imagine that? Fewer people used Twitter during December — a month with two big holidays (and plenty of days of downtime and travel surrounding them). Does that really surprise anyone?

Also, anyone who seriously follows Twitter knows that tracking site visitors requires going down the rabbit hole of all the third-party apps — from desktop to cellphone — that people use to connect with Twitter. Many critics question the reliability of numbers related to Twitter’s traffic because of the numerous ways to tweet without ever visiting the site.

When I read the word “peak,” I normally think a decline is around the corner. Curiously, some less prominent numbers in CNN’s article don’t suggest that at all. Web analysts HubSpot find average Twitter users now:
• Have more followers: From 70 in July to 300.
• Follow more feeds: From 45 in July to 170.
• Tweet more: From 120 tweets in July to 420.

HubSpot also found that Twitter is becoming more international. The U.S. represented under 51% of Twitter users in December, down from 61% in June. That number rings true personally as more and more overseas social media and marketing people are connecting with me.

So, let’s see, Twitter users are more engaged than ever. And people around the world are joining every day. Not exactly a “peaking” scenario, is it? Maybe Twitter is, gasp, maturing.

OK, business folks, you now know Twitter is neither a) all noise nor b) peaking. Next, we’ll show you how it can benefit your business, no matter the size.

They say it’s a bunch of noise. Some say they don’t want to know what folks had for breakfast (More about that in a minute). They don’t see any tangible business benefit from using it.

I understand some of their concerns. There are plenty of idiots on Twitter. I love the idiots who look at the Trending Topics and then try to fit as many as possible into 140 characters. I love the idiots who have 5,000 followers and have yet to post a single tweet. And I especially love the idiots who spam about such exciting things as all-natural teeth-whitening.

I could go on. But there are idiots everywhere online. Locally, all you have to do is check out some of the comments on ajc.com’s sports or political blogs to know there are plenty of people who need an outlet for whatever venom or half-truths they need to share.

Why should Twitter be any different? Yes, there’s a lot of noise. Yes, there are hucksters. Yes, there are annoying Justin Bieber fans compelled to make him a Trending Topic several times a week. (Note to Justin: Can’t you just take them with you back to MySpace? Please?)

But there are other qualities that make Twitter a necessity for me, and should make it essential for many, if not most, business people. We’ll keep it simple today and not go into all the specific ways Twitter can help your business.

First, you have complete control on Twitter over who you follow and — very important — who follows you (once you get them to follow you, that is.) Don’t want to read the idiot offering whiter teeth? Block them.

Second, no matter what your profession, you will get access to the most cutting-edge and current information through Twitter. I promise you, while there may still be a few good discussion groups on LinkedIn, you will find superior information on Twitter. Why? Because that’s where the best minds are. After reading Twitter, LinkedIn seems so . . . 2005. I subscribe to countless RSS feeds, so that I can keep current on different subjects, including, obviously, social media. Yet every day Twitter brings me a new, and timely, information source — a blogger I haven’t read or a point of view I hadn’t considered. I wouldn’t have the competitive edge in my business without the intelligence Twitter users provide each day.

Third, Twitter users are more receptive to business messages, far more than on other social platforms. Studies indicate that at least 20 percent of the messages on Twitter relate to branding. Think you could get away with 20 percent of your Facebook status updates related to your business? I think not.

Now about that tweeting about breakfast complaint. What have been the top topics on Twitter this week? President Obama’s State of the Union speech hit 9,000 tweets per minute, while the iPad launch reached 7,000 tweets per minute, according to Retrevo’s Tech Buzzmeter. By comparison, topics such as Britney Spears get about 10-20 tweets per minute.

So much for breakfast, or celebrity, tweets. Next, we’ll take a look at another Twitter misconception — that it is peaking. Then we’ll delve more into some not-so-well-known ways Twitter can help your business.

Hope you had a great week. Have questions about Twitter? Give us a shout.

iStrategyLabs, the digital marketing firm which has been tracking Facebook’s growth since October 2007, reported that the Atlanta area had a 267.6% increase between Jan. 4, 2009,  and last Monday. We blogged in July about Atlanta’s phenomenal growth, noting that the metro area had jumped to No. 2 in registered users behind only New York. However, Los Angeles, which experienced its own 240.6% growth, surged to No. 2 over the second half of the year.

Atlanta, as of Jan. 4, had 1,967,720 registered Facebook users, compared to New York’s 2,934,580 and L.A.’s 2,166,840. Atlanta slightly edged Chicago. (See full chart here.)

One can quibble about the value of numbers, especially if accounts are inactive, but if you own a business in metro Atlanta, one point should be clear: Your customers are on Facebook. And while the demographics aren’t broken down for Atlanta, growth is strongest nationally in the 25-34, 35-54 and, especially, 55-plus markets. Sounds like your customers, right?

Facebook provides a unique opportunity for Atlanta area businesses to connect with customers and potential new ones. Don’t know where to start? Don’t have time for Facebook? There are plenty of qualified consultants or marketing firms who can help.

Strike now while it’s hot.

Then came the punch line. The job was for two hours a day, $10-$12 an hour, depending on experience.

Evidently, this “cool” company doesn’t expect much ROI (Return on Investment) from social media.

A lot of business owners I’ve met in recent months are probably not that different than whoever runs this “cool” company. Small businesses and professionals are intrigued by social media, but a) don’t have the time to get involved or b) don’t see the ROI of hiring a professional to help.

So I’m going to give you not just one, but three simple examples of ROI in social media.

1. An Atlanta executive coach (Disclosure: a client who also happens to be my wife) who works with engineering firms was in a lull in signing new clients. However, the coach recognized that LinkedIn could help her open doors. She used the Advanced Search feature of LinkedIn to identify companies that were clearly doing well during the tough economy (e.g. hiring). Working through mutual connections on the business networking site, she was introduced to executives who then contracted to work with her.

2. Charles Nelson, president of Sprinkles Cupcakes, has a company that apparently makes great cupcakes. His cupcakes are so good that he has amassed 70,000 fans on a Facebook business page. The “Beverly Hills baker to the stars” announces a secret word each day, and the first 25 or 50 people to show up with that word at any of his five stores gets a free cupcake. The ROI: A booming business and highly effective word of mouth. Nelson has not spent a dime on any other advertising or marketing in five years.

OK, you say, that’s Atlanta and LA. Those are big, highly wired cities. Well, let’s turn to:

3. The New York Times In July featured mom-and-pop shops around the country making money through Twitter. Consider just one: Silver Barn Antiques in tiny Columbus, Texas. Even before launching a Web site, the owner was able to find both suppliers and customers nationwide. “Twitter has been a real valuable tool because it’s made us national instead of a little-bitty store in a little-bitty town,”  she told The Times.

So what is the value of social media to your business? Consider your goals. What is the value of a new customer or client? You know how many leads you generally need before you attract one customer. What is the value of generating a lead for your business?

My guess is it’s worth more than $20-$24 a day. Or even 25 cupcakes.

I never totally bought that argument. Newspaper sales staffs could have been more creative in educating advertisers on how to attract women and not just settle for male sports readers wanting a tire sale. And sports news staffs were too drenched in testosterone to recognize that a large number of those filling the stands are women and many can read a box score.

But that was yesteryear and the media landscape has changed. Newspapers now struggle to keep readers of any gender — and advertisers — in the advancing digital age. However, the advertising truism still exists — in sales, women are still the coveted audience

Where are businesses looking for female customers going to find them these days? Social media, of course. A new study by the IT firm Royal Pingdom finds that 84% of the 19 social networking sites have more female than male users (53% females, 47% male). If Digg, Reddit and Slashdot were removed from the study, ALL 16 major social sites would have a majority of female users on them. Even LinkedIn, which has reportedly been the only site with a larger male audience, now is more predominantly female, according to the study.

This finding follows on another study last year by online research firm Rapleaf which found that women have more friends in social networks than men.

The newest study provides yet more evidence of how social media can help meet business goals. Most of your customers are using social media. They increasingly expect to be interacting with businesses while on their favorite social sites. If your business strategy especially targets women and you’re not interacting with them through social media, then hopefully this study will serve as a wake-up call.

You can thank me later.

One post described the flawed attempt by college football’s Bowl Championship Series to start a Twitter account, ostensibly to communicate with fans, answer questions and spruce up the image of the much-maligned bowl system. Heck, fans, most coaches and even the president want a playoff system to crown a football national champion. (Me, too.)

The result? A PR nightmare, according to Social Media Today, as @InsideThe BCS tweeted about 30 times (now up to 57) while screenload after screenload of critics weighed in with negative comments. And SMT wrote whoever was tweeting (they suspect a PR firm) misquoted Florida coach Urban Meyer as being a supporter of the BCS system. He’s not.

While I salute the BCS folks for attempting to enter the social space, it’s clear they needed to think through a strategy and prepare in advance. They should have known they would face an onslaught. Now that the bus has hit them, it’ll be interesting to see how they respond.

The second post focused on a conference where discussion centered on how companies are turning to Gen Y employees to handle their social media marketing.

My take: As we previously wrote, age is no longer a factor in social media. Facebook is gaining more Boomers; Twitter is now attracting Gen Yers. In a bad economy, people of all ages are turning to LinkedIn. So why would companies look to Gen Yers only to handle their social media responsibilities? It’s not like they all have a special gene that makes them marketers.

Whoever handles your company’s social media profiles reflects upon your company. If that employee, intern, contractor, consultant or PR/marketing firm doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can do harm. Many companies have already been burned by well-meaning, low-paid and inexperienced people representing their brand.

I’m reminded of the large Atlanta law firm who advertised earlier this year for someone to manage their social media identity. These lawyers, who spend their days carefully crafting legal arguments for large amounts of money, were paying a miniscule salary and clearly wanted a recent college grad. Nothing against recent college grads — I have two children graduating in the next year — but it was clear this firm wanted the benefits of social media without a seasoned professional. Why would a group of lawyers open themselves to such risk? Let’s hope they were lucky.

If you own a business and you need help in launching — and sustaining — your social media profiles, you should think through who you put in that role. Do you really leave it to an intern? Or the IT guy/Webmaster who can code great things, but can’t spell or write a comprehensible sentence?

Updating Twitter or a Facebook business page doesn’t require technical skills. Anyone of any age can do it. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, the challenge is finding someone with a mature-enough marketing and business sense to meet your needs.

There is great value for businesses to gain through social media. Don’t underestimate that value if you need help. Hiring or contracting someone on the cheap could end up being very costly.

First, let’s be clear. I wasn’t anywhere near Facebook HQ when they recently shared their six-month product roadmap. I’m depending on trusted, reliable social media strategists, such as Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang (formerly of Forrester Research), for details. Second, some of the major Facebook changes will really be more suited to bigger companies with large budgets for marketing and developers who can create customized apps for them.

So let’s get that news out of the way. Developers creating Facebook apps will be able to ask Facebook users for their email addresses. And so companies who create such apps will have a whole bunch of potential new data to work with. They’ll be able to socialize their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with real contact information from social media and distinguish between existing customers and new prospects. So companies can further integrate their social media data into e-mail marketing.

But that’s the world of big-volume products and services. What do these changes mean for small businesses and professional service firms? And how should they be preparing for the changes?

As we wrote Wednesday, sites will be able to choose the types of Facebook functionality they want on their sites. For example, Facebook users can become “fans” of your Web site while visiting there. So that means their friends learn about your site from these new fans. A business can create a news stream visible on their site which would also appear on the Facebook pages of their fans — and also be visible to the fans’ friends.

If you have a small business that depends upon a Web site for business (and that’s a large percentage of them), you should:

• Be thinking about what Facebook features you’d like to have on your site.

• Be setting aside some money for your Webmaster to make sure you’re ready when it’s possible to integrate that functionality on your site

• Be thinking ahead on what types of creative ways you can interact with new users coming to your sites. Special deals? Coupons? What can you do to get users to come back to your site? And bring their friends with them?

• Be thinking about ways to harness the Facebook news stream. For example, if I want to promote this blog, I now use a Facebook page giving a short summary of what I’ve written and a link back to here. In 2010, I’ll be able to simply flag Facebook friends or site fans that my latest post is done. It’ll show up in their live feeds. Bloggers can expect increased comments because people are more likely to comment through Facebook functionality than traditional blog commenting. (I get far more comments about this blog through Facebook than I do here.)

So business sites with active updates and content will be in the best position to take advantage of the Facebook functionality. If you can share compelling content and helpful information with your site visitors, you can use the tools to drive more eyeballs and repeat visitors to your site.

Small businesses, this is a great opportunity. Facebook is bringing the social Web to you. Be prepared to take advantage of it.

That sentence from a new Wired piece by Steven Levy sums up perfectly the history and growth of Twitter. The simple microblogging service has grown from the work of its users. Users created its conventions — @ symbols with names, retweeting and hashtags. Developers created countless third-party applications to boost the functionality of the simple product — many with names playing off the Twitter name. (Tweetie, Twazzup, Twellow, anyone?)

However, Levy’s article also clearly states the challenge Twitter faces as it wrestles with becoming a mature business. He points out that changes suggested by the company have historically drawn fire. For example, Twitter created a Suggested Users List in February, with about 200 recommendations for celebrities/companies/etc. that new users could follow. As Levy correctly writes: “Outrage ensued.”

And behemoths Google and Facebook don’t help Twitter’s business planning by adapting similar real-time functionality into their services.

Small-business owners undoubtedly could look at Twitter’s history and say this is no way to run a business. However, any business owner can recognize the company, despite its early lack of clear direction, has enormous potential if it can keep the “mob” somewhat happy as it evolves.

Will Twitter be its own worst enemy?

We won’t know that for some years to come. In the meantime, Levy’s piece is a great reflection on how Twitter got to where it is today.

• Thanks to Steven Moore of Marietta, Ga. (who, by the way, shares great small-business advice on Twitter) for passing on some interesting news. A new survey finds a growing number of small-business owners are using social media to promote their businesses. The survey, by Internet2Go and Merchant Circle, found about 45 percent of those surveyed are using Facebook or Twitter. Writes John Jantsch of DuctTape Marketing in his analysis:

“… small business owners are coming to understand the power of social media and the relative low cost vs. high return opportunity. However, the survey further suggests, to me at least, that while it’s easy to get on Facebook and Twitter, there’s still a gap in understanding how to make them pay. The danger in jumping into social media networks, with no barrier to entry, without a strong “hub” foundation of a blog or content portal is that it’s difficult to convert someone from the awareness that might be gained through Facebook to the trust needed to make a sale.”

Absolutely, John. Social media by itself will not help you, unless you have a clear, integrated strategy that drives people to your blog or Web site and you build a business connection. Social media are emerging as a major piece in the business puzzle. However, “puzzle” is the operative word here; small businesses are still trying to make sense of how social media can rock their world.

In short, social media consultants better always be prepared for one request from potential small-business clients. With apologies to actor Cuba Gooding in the movie “Jerry Maguire” — “Show me the money.”

• TweetDeck released an upgrade today which already has proven it significantly reduces the drain on your computer and is much more stable. TweetDeck is the most widely used third-party application to get the most functionality out of a Twitter account — seamless retweets, direct messaging, link shortening, etc. Previously, I would have to load it a second time to get all the columns to load. This version is a great improvement. I wish TweetDeck were available for BlackBerry. iPhone users have a great choice between TweetDeck and Tweetie.

• Interesting Wall Street Journal piece today on MySpace (both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) The article’s headline: “MySpace Tries to Recover Its Cool.” Says the WSJ:

In a strategy shift, MySpace is striving to become an online hangout for people to connect with friends over entertainment content, whether it’s the new Pearl Jam album, blogs from celebrities like British pop singer Lily Allen or a karaoke contest for the Fox musical comedy “Glee.”

The site is experiencing flat growth (especially compared to Facebook) and declining ad revenues (the article states eMarketer estimates U.S. ad spending on the site will be down 15% from 2008.)

The challenge for MySpace is how they are going to remain “cool” as users age and move elsewherewhile younger users face an endless selection of entertainment choices. We shall see.