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Twitter for Businesses

Posted: Friday, May 29th, 2009

If you haven't heard about Twitter, your heart has probably stopped beating and you are not longer with us in a physical form...

Twitter is part of what's called "social media" - a method of communicating with others via the Internet.  Twitter allows for small messages (40 characters or less) to be exchanged at lightning speed. Twitter was started way back in 2006, but it was the siege in Mumbai that demonstrated its usefulness and put it on the world stage. Tweeters (Twitter users) kept the world informed moment by moment what was happening... and anyone could tune in - it's not restricted to "friends" like Facebook.  You can read anyone's Twitter mail anywhere in the world.

It's easy to join, it's free, and it's easy to use.  But not so easy to use effectively when it comes to using it to benefit your business.  Yet some businesses are finding a lot of success through Twitter.  Here's 10 tips that can help you achieve that success.

• Instead of answering the question, "What are you doing?", answer the question, "What has your attention?"
• Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It's nice to have a variety.
• When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what's coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
• Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
• Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
• Tweet about other people's stuff. It may not directly impact your business, but it will attract attention and can, in a roundabout way, bring people back to you if what you say is of interest to others.
• When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
• Share the human side of your company. If you're bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
• Don't toot your own horn too much.
• If you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

For more information about business twittering, check out http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

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