How to Leverage Twitter for Businesses
If you pay attention to social media trends at all, you’ve likely heard of Twitter.com. The LA Times uses it to send updates about wildfires; the NY Times uses it to track Washington politics; celebrities use it to tell their fans about their latest projects. But if you don’t have a Twitter account, you are likely wondering what all the fuss is about. Specifically, are there any benefits to using Twitter for your business?
What is Twitter?
In brief, Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging tool. It enables users to send small (140 character) messages called “tweets” to the group of people who follow them. In return, users can see the tweets of everyone they follow. Twitter only started in 2006, but its strong growth in popularity has been because the 140 character limit enables users to easily update their Twitter accounts through text messages over their phones.
Although exact stats by Twitter are not released, Alexa.com ranks it as one of the top 50 sites on the Internet. And as mentioned, it is also growing quickly: Neilson.com says the site grew over 1000% between 2008 and 2009.
How to Leverage it for Business
Like any social networking tool, Twitter`s power comes in its ability to develop and deepen relationships. But as a business person you first have to decide: are you creating relationships at the individual level, or at the brand/company level?
“Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.”
- Matt Goulart
Individuals
The ideal way to use Twitter is as a fully-rounded individual. Ashton Kutcher is the most popular Twitter user because people like him and his tweets. It’s as simple as that. If you are working in any sort of business where personal connections are key (which is most businesses these days), Twitter can be a great way to build those personal relationships.
The benefits are obvious. If one of your clients follows you on Twitter, they are more likely to want to do business with you or to recommend you to friends. Instead of always talking to hundreds of clients, you can stay in touch with all of them at minimal time expense to you. And if you have important news about your business or a press release to share, you have a ready audience.
But how do you build those relationships? There are two key things to keep in mind:
1. You should be seen as a source of important information that your client can immediately and freely use. For instance, interior designers use Twitter to pass along great home decorating articles to their clients. This isn’t about selling your product or service. It is about giving useful stuff away and selling you and your expertise.
2. Don’t forget to have fun with it. You don’t want to seem like a robot. Pass along a link to that hilarious dog video every once and awhile. It will give your followers warm feelings towards you. After all, people follow the Twitter users they like.
Brands and Companies
For brands and companies, it is a little harder. Since Twitter is a social networking tool, users can feel strange if a brand or company is talking to them and not a person. Brands and companies also have to maintain tighter boundaries on what they can or cannot say.
Twitter works best with lifestyle brands and companies (Apple, American Apparel), brands and companies that have ethos or philosophies behind them (Dove, Whole Foods), or brands people just think are cool (Marvel). Since viewers are engaged by their wider brand personality, the brands have more things to tweet about. Dove, for instance, tweets about many great ways to keep your skin healthy.
But if you don’t have a wider brand or company personality, you still have something to offer of plenty of interest to your followers: special offers, news about new products, freebies and coupons. Jet Blue has one of the biggest corporate followings on Twitter, and it is because its followers are hanging on for new flight deals.
As well, since Twitter is about building relationships, it helps give companies a friendly face. Smart corporations and brands use Twitter it to handle customer service problems quickly and easily.
In fact, the smaller your business, the more appropriate Twitter might be for you. A local pizza shop, for instance, can tweet about special deals and contests. Without the pressure of a giant multinational brand behind you, you can develop a more fun and zany personality on Twitter. And of course, it’s a great way to do marketing at a small business level because it’s free.
How to Get Started
It’s pretty easy. Go to Twitter.com and start up an account. Since this is a business account, you’ll need to provide as much relevant information on your profile as possible, such as your corporate address, phone number, and any of the blogs or websites you might run. People also like a picture, so it is recommended to upload one.
Start building your network. To do this, you can quickly import your contact information from your gmail, yahoo or aol account. Or you can just start looking for people by name using the search feature. With these tools, you can begin to follow people.
Getting followers is a little harder. To do that, don’t hesitate to tell everyone and their dog your twitter address. Put your Twitter address everywhere: on your business card, on your blog, on your facebook profile.
If you are running a blog, you can add some Twitter plug-ins like Twitterfeed.com to make all of this a little easier. Twitterfeed automatically pushes new blog posts to Twitter. As well, the Tweet This plug-in for WordPress lets readers of your blog easily tweet about your blog posts. There’s a whole array of other plug-ins here.
And the rest is up to you! As mentioned, the best way to leverage Twitter for business is is to be informative and interesting. People will let others know about you and will pass along your messages (retweet) if they are of value. And interact! If other users notice that your conversations are funny or interesting, they’ll want to follow you, too.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!