Dynamic Business

Twitter—it’s the latest craze in social media. The micro-blogging site is new, full of promise, and experiencing a popularity explosion. But is Twitter for you, and what opportunities can it offer your business?

Twittering is no longer a pleasant stream of bird-sound from your back garden, but a stream of messages, 140 characters or less, publically broadcast on Twitter.com for anyone who cares to read them.

Launched in 2006, and currently gaining users at an astonishing rate, Twitter allows its community to post ‘tweets’—short sentences that Twitter users use to broadcast anything from what they had for breakfast to commentary on world affairs. Members of the Twitter community who sign up to receive these tweets are known as ‘followers’, and the number of followers you have is one measure of your Twitter success.

Twitter’s front page describes it as a service for “friends, family, and co–workers to communicate”. There’s no mention of businesses per se, but in fact a large and ever increasing number are jumping on board. Business directory Twibs now counts more than 6,000 businesses on the service —a number they say has doubled in the past few weeks—with the big name brands and companies including Dell, Ford, Kodak, Hertz, Starbucks and H&R Block numbering among the ‘twitterati’.

So how are these businesses using Twitter, what opportunities are they discovering and how can your business benefit?

Keeping an ear out
One of the features of Twitter is that the conversations held on the service are public. Twitter users are constantly posting their thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes. This means that even if you’re not going to participate yourself, you can still use Twitter to monitor what people are saying about your company, products or brand.

Twitter’s built-in search tool allows you to search for tweets that mention any specific word. It’s also relatively easy to create an automatic feed that updates whenever specific words, such as your business name, your competitors’ names, or terms relevant to your sector are mentioned.

Monitoring Twitter is going to become an increasingly effective way to keep watch on your reputation and to gain insight into what people are saying in regard to your company, so get on board.

Connecting on a personal level
Of course, Twitter’s biggest benefits come with participation. At the moment, one of the most exciting things about Twitter is that it is still an evolving platform, and businesses are constantly discovering new and useful ways of capitalising on it as a tool.

Clothing business Urban Outfitters, for example, broadcasts special offers to their followers, such as free shipping on shoes purchased online. On the other hand, QuickBooks, makers of small business accounting software, tweets about its upcoming conference presentations and provides a running commentary on the state of the economy and issues facing small business.

When joining Twitter, it’s important to realise that the service is an opportunity to give a personal face to your business or brand: a way to give your business a presence in the world that is far more dynamic and instantaneous than a static website or a press release.

Twitter is about ‘people’, so making a particular staff member your designated ‘twitterer’ means that your business will be much more likely to attract and retain an audience. Companies who’ve ventured down this route include Marriott Hotels, whose official ‘twitterer’ is John Wolf from its Corporate Communications department.

If your business is large or has a wide product base, you might want to follow the example of Dell and Microsoft and create multiple Twitter accounts for different departments or personalities within your the business. This helps customers who may only want to follow news about particular products.

What to Tweet about?
Once you’re set up, the next question is what should you include in your tweets?

Peter Denton, product manager at Twibs, a directory of businesses on Twitter, says that Twitter is like a dinner party. “The person who has interesting things to say, whether relevant to their business or something they read about a topic completely unrelated is the person who will get listened to,” he says.

Constant selling is a recipe for failure, Denton advises. Instead, businesses who interact in a sincere way, sharing information and insights will prosper. “Followers need to connect on a personal level,” he says. While ‘tweets’ drawing attention to sales, special offers, or new products are certainly not forbidden, they’ll be more effective if they’re just a small component of your overall stream.

One effective strategy is to draw attention to external reviews or mentions of your business or products in other media. If you have a company or personal blog, Twitter is also a great medium for increasing your readership. When you’ve written a new post, you can ‘tweet’ a short summation of its argument or theme, along with a link back to your blog. If your followers like what they read, they may even ‘re-tweet’ your message; that is, broadcast it to their own followers, exposing your business to a new audience. ‘Following’ other Twitter users is a must. Handily, it can also double as a form of subtle promotion, with users receiving notification that your business is following them, along with a link to your profile.