subject: I Tweet, You Tweet, We All Tweet: Twitter And Your Business [print this page] Twitter has exploded, with growth rates of 585% year-over-year and over 100 million members as of this writing. All those Twitter
users are potentially waiting for you to communicate with them. When you start using Twitter for
your business, youre entering a new phase of Internet marketing in which you discuss your brand on a daily basis and send out your
thoughts in bursts of 140 characters or less. Youre on the leading edge of a communication and cultural
transformation in the business landscape of the world. Isnt this exciting?
Twitter has disrupted the traditional marketing process and placed the customer in control of the marketing message. But dont fret!
The future of marketing is bright never before have you had such possibilities for growing your business. Twitter enables you to
find potential customers quickly and
easily and communicate with them with only a few keystrokes.
Using Twitter in Your Business
You can use Twitter as a valuable marketing tool for your business, whether you have a small, medium-sized, or large business. Also,
Twitter can help complement your companys current PR and customer service efforts. The following sections describe several ways
that you can use Twitter for your business.
Sharing news and stories
Because Twitter gives you the ability to share 140-character thoughts in a split second, you can easily share links to PR releases
and stories about your business, service, or product. But in order to make your tweets interesting and diverse so that you can hold
on to and increase your followers, consider sharing news and stories about the industry that you serve. You can become a reference
for people who are looking for information about the topic, and that status can ultimately gain you more followers who may become
your customers.
You can also branch out into general news stories, keeping an eye on trending topics on Twitter. Tweeting about more than just your
business and industry can help show the human side of your company; however, depending on what your Twitter marketing strategy is,
keep your brand in mind when you use Twitter and consider what your tweets say about your brand as a whole. Make sure that you
enhance and complement your brands story through your
tweets.
Empowering your fans
Twitter gives you the ability to take a single thought and share it with millions of people. And your customer evangelists can
spread your message, as well as their opinions about your companys greatness, to as many people as possible.
Your evangelists can help you get your message out, but you must first find out who they are and remember to give to them (by
retweeting their interesting messages) before you ask for their support.
You can spot your fans and evangelists by keeping an eye on who retweets your posts most often. Also, monitor Twitter trends in your
industry so that you can spot the people you need to be listening to.
Through a disciplined balance between listening to others and retweeting their useful contributions, eventually you earn the right
to ask for their support in return. The reward may be as big as having your brand story go viral and getting picked up by thousands
or millions of potential customers.
Customer service
Twitter can help you turn your companys customer service into a competitive advantage, as Comcast and Zappos.com have done through
their highly personal and accessible customer service reps on Twitter.
If you involve the right people in your company on Twitter and empower them to talk openly to customers you can save both your
customers and yourself time, money, and frustration: a true win-win situation.
