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You may not have heard of Twitter, but you will. It is the latest social media craze and has many attractions for both personal and business users; not least the fact that it’s year-on-year growth is around 1000% (according to Nielsen Online).

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users (Tweeters) to send and read updates (Tweets), 140 characters at a time.

According to Twitter, “It is a service for friends, family and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?“.

Users send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS), or applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific and TweetDeck. These updates are available via the Tweeters profile, or delivered to ‘followers’ life-feeds.

What’s in it for Business?

While Twitter is still in the early stages and has relied on others to add functionality some common uses include:

• Establishing new contacts (using ‘following’)
• Building your network (of ‘followers’)
• Engaging with your community (by ‘replying to’ posts)
• Discovering Trends (using the search, #tags and analysis tools)

How do I use Twitter?

Getting started on Twitter is free and takes minutes. It begins with:

• Sign-up (The biggest challenge is choosing your Twitter name)
• Skip the next two screens (unless you have a Webmail account with Google, Yahoo, etc. or want to follow Twitters ’suggested’ Tweeters, I recommend skipping the next two screens)
• Personalise (by adding you own profile picture, your location, a brief bio and a suitable background image)
• Follow (find your contacts and local Tweeters using the email tools and Find People search. Also check the followers of people you know and build your network)
• Search (for Tweets on your subject, view the profile of the Tweeters who posted the items and follow them)

So once you’re set-up, how will you use Twitter?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Have conversations (Twitter is conversation tool, you post an update and people reply)
• Search on your company, brand and products (find people who are talking about stuff you’re interested in and follow them)
• Engage with people who are talking about the stuff you’re interested in
• Build positive relationships
• List your Favorites
• Publish helpful content (this builds your followers)
• Use #hashtags to promote products, events, etc.
• Take your Twitter relationships offline via Tweetups

Extracting Value

Twitter is perhaps the best example so far of a real time public news service. In fact it’s not uncommon for news to break first on Twitter, then be picked up by the Media. esp. where this involves some disaster, shooting or scandal.

Tracking the frequency of keywords gives Twitter watchers a real time view of what’s happening. If these updates relate to your company or products you have a measure of the ‘buzz’ that effects you.

These are some ways Twitter can help your business:

• Your Followers provides a measure of your reach (both quality and quantity are important)
• Grading your followers shows their influence and the stage of your relationship
• Using @Replies shows your level of engagement (the higher the better)
• Monitor inbound Traffic from Twitter to your website (is anyone listening?)
• Monitor sales linked to Twitter traffic (is it working?)

To make the most of Twitter you’ll need to use a few Tools & Resources. While this list is growing, these should get you started:

• Tracking the Buzz (TweetingTrends, Twist, Monitter, and TwitScoop)
• Tiny URLs (allow you to shorten the URL and fit the 140 character limit. E.g. bit.ly, is.gd, ow.ly, tinyurl.com)
• Twitter Feed (RSS feeds to / from Twitter)
• #Tags (used to index updates when keywords are not enough)
• Twitter APIs (Dan @Zambonini at BoxUK has produced a great Twitter API list)

Through using Twitter to engage with industry leaders and customers alike, and by tracking and analyzing Twitter activity companies gain valuable insight into the issues that are important today. How you use these contacts and insights is up to you.

Tags: Twitter, Twitter for Business

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 11:50 pm and is filed under social networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.