Twitter for Business

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Twitter debuted as a side project in March 2006 for a San Francisco based podcasting company. Just 3 years later it is booming; its growth has been meteoric, showing annual growth rates of over 1300%. Initially people used Twitter to create, discover a...

Twitter debuted as a side project in March 2006 for a San Francisco based podcasting company. Just 3 years later it is booming; its growth has been meteoric, showing annual growth rates of over 1300%. Initially people used Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now an increasing number of people within the corporate world are starting to recognise its potential to reach out and engage with the company’s customer base and other interested parties. From super large multinationals to your corner ice-cream vendor, Twitter's reach and immediacy is like no other communication service in history.

Twitter is now emerging as a key business tool that savvy organisations are using to engage with both their new and their old audience. Twitter allows organisations to engage with customers, partners and others in a direct way that is both personal and public. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies more and more companies are embracing the ideals of transparency and the thought of publicly engaging with their clients is no longer as scary or fraught with danger like it once was.

Getting Started - The basics of Twitter usage

Getting started with Twitter is very simple it’s streamlined to be completely foolproof enabling literally millions of people to sign up to accounts.

• Signing up takes just a few minutes. Head over to http://twitter.com and click the green "Sign Up Now" button. Some things to remember here:
  • Full Name: If you are signing up on behalf of an organisation use your organisation's name in the "Full Name" field.
  • Username: This is what everyone on Twitter will know you by (e.g. bright_labs, JetstarAirways, RioTinto) * Note try to make this as short as possible.
• Create a short but compelling profile. Once you have signed up to a Twitter account head to the upper-right corner of the page and click Settings. When on this screen adjust the time zone and then type in your URL (but leave off the www. if you can as this just takes up unnecessary space). Sometimes a straight domain name without the www. will not work so try it before you commit. E.g. http://brightlabs.com.au works just the same as http://www.brightlabs.com.au.
• Make sure you choose your location otherwise you will show up in fewer search results.
• Last step: head to the picture tab and upload a photo, your logo or anything that identifies your organisation. Nothing says newbie or spammer like the default icons does ;-)

For some more resources on getting started, like understanding what following means or how to find people you know on Twitter then check out this resource from the Twitter website.

Twitter Strategy - The Do's and Dont's

• Do try it for three weeks. Plenty of people have dropped a tweet here or there in the first couple of days and say they don't get it. This is very understandable since the true value comes when you start to engage with your audience. I would suggest getting the most out of your Twitter experience that you follow these tactics.
• Log into Twitter daily and make yourself tweet 3-5 things each day for the first three weeks.
• When you are logged in run one search and follow 5-10 promising accounts that look interesting (don't worry they won't bite, and if the account is boring or annoying you can simply “un-follow” them). The beauty of Twitter is that people choose to listen to you, so if you don't like what you hear, you can stop listening. Conversely it is important to make sure you are at least mildly interesting or conversational to ensure people don't “unfollow” you ;-).
• After three weeks you will have probably spent about 5 hours and sent between 63 and 105 tweets out to your audience. I think that's enough time to evaluate whether the most important communication tool we've seen since email is for you or not.

Evaluating something is all about fully engaging in the experience. Try not to go in with preconceived ideas and just tweet till you can't tweet no more as I am sure an imminent Twitter song would go.

Engagement - Interacting with your audience

Engaging with your audience is easy. Whether you use Twitter for professional or personal purposes it is important to give people a glimpse into your life. This personal side will definitely help you create or strengthen relationships. In the first few weeks try to look for opportunities to reply to the people you are following. This will give them an opportunity to respond to you. Remember though don't be upset if they don't respond back. There are a million reasons why they haven't, not the least being that they didn't see your response. Twitter is a real-time experience and unless you are using the right program or looking in the right places you might miss the tweets people send to you.

It's best to start by responding to people that you know as this is always more comfortable, but by no means limit interaction to only those people you know. Twitter is all about connecting with and learning about new people and new things.

Business - Special considerations and other thoughts

If you have decided to use Twitter in a professional capacity, whether it be as an individual or for your business, then you should keep a few things in mind. @timoreilly and @sarahM have written an excellent book called "The Twitter Book". They suggest that the first thing you should do if you are planning to use Twitter as part of your strategy is to listen. Rather than just telling the Twitterverse how good you or your service/product is, listen to what people are saying about you and your industry. The people who are already using Twitter will expect you to engage with them rather than just preach to them.

It is important to create clear goals around this communication channel. For businesses an unfocused foray into the Twitterverse can sometimes end in not so optimal results. You can find more than enough video evidence of this on Google.

Posting on particular days will also provide you with maximum exposure. According to "The Twitter Book" the most effective time to Tweet is in the middle of the week (Wednesday and Thursday). Coincidentally this is also the time of the week that the most number of Tweets are posted. Initially it would seem that posting Tweets on the days when the most Tweets are posted would cause your important information to be "lost in the noise". Although counter-intuitive, this is not actually the case - the most popular days for posting Tweets are also the days that most Tweets are re-Tweeted (people following you forward your Tweet on to their audience etc). View the full report.



The other thing to remember is the time zone issue. If your target audience is in the US try to make sure that you Tweet during their working hours rather than their leisure time as this will give your post the maximum possible exposure, otherwise people might just simply miss the message.

Tools - Making your Twitter experience easier

If you have a central account or even multiple accounts for your organisation then you will probably want more than one person to manage them. There is an awesome Web Application that we here at Brightlabs use for managing our Twitter experience.

CoTweet - CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter. It basically has everything you need to manage your business accounts. Take a look at the features.

There are also a number of Desktop clients for Windows, Mac or Linux machines and these really go a long way to making your life easier.

So the only thing to do now is to get out there and give it a go. Create your Twitter account now and start engaging with your audience. Don't forget to follow the Brightlabs team at http://twitter.com/bright_labs.

We'll be ready to follow you too and start tweeting for the better good (well at least for the good of both of our businesses). As all the social media gurus are saying, "Let's engage!".