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Twitter in Business: It’s Real!

Written by: Bernie Borges

Article Overview: How can businesses use Twitter in a way that executives can justify having their employees spend time on Twitter?

Twitter in Business: It’s Real!

Twitter is a cross between a social networking platform and a micro blogging platform. You create a simple profile, you start following people, some follow you and you have 140 characters to say something about what you’re doing, thinking or planning. People who talk about interesting, meaningful stuff and include links to blogs and articles have a positive affect on their brand.

There has been lots of press coverage on Twitter including a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Twitter Goes Mainstream.”

In December 2008 HubSpot published the Q4 report on the State of the Twittersphere. Some interesting stats from this report:

* Twitter is dominated by new users - 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008.
* 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are opened every day.
* 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers.
* 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all.
* There is a strong correlation between the number of people you follow and the number of followers you have.

Chuck Palm started following some Twitter celebrities recently. He started following the CEO of Zappos, the well known online shoe store. Chuck searched for blue suede shoes and found a pair that meets his unique feet. Chuck found their customer service was terrific!

Chuck Palm's blue suede shoes

Zappos has over 400 employees using Twitter. They are very focused on customer service, engaging people on the web and building relationships. When you buy from Zappos you can Tweet what you bought and post it to Facebook.

When someone of prominence starts following you on Twitter others notice and your Twitter following starts to grow.

A Ford Motor Company promotion: “just drive one.” Scott Monty heads up social media marketing at Ford Motor. He builds relationships on the social web. He communicates what Ford is working on and allows word of mouth on the web to run its natural course. He talks in a conversational way. He informs in a human voice. He educates and he engages people. He once conducted an interview on Twitter between Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO and consumers.

Many famous individuals use Twitter. To name just a few: Lance Armstrong, Governor Schwarzenegger, Demi Moore, Anderson Cooper. Cooper always drops links to stories on CNN.

How important is the number of followers? It depends on how important that is to you. Guy Kawasaki once stated that he would be willing to pay $500 per month. He said it’s the best platform to communicate with so many people so easily. Marketing reach like never before!

“Show Me The Money!”

Who in your company is a good candidate to embrace Twitter to write interesting posts several times per day? Ideally it should be more than one person. Consider a Twitter persona branded by the company, e.g., Apple, Comcast, L.A. Fire Department, Zappos, HubSpot, etc. Individual employees should be Tweeting about anything relevant, not always about yourself or your company.

Focus on building great relationships!

Breaking Twitter Etiquette

The biggest etiquette rule on Twitter is not to view Twitter as a platform for shameless promotion. Some view it as an advertising billboard. It’ NOT! it’s a platform for your human voice to build relationships across a great reach. You can make so many connections on Twitter. Market through relationship building, not shameless promotion.

@chuckpalm got a new Twitter background. The gal behind TweetGlitz.com created a new Twitter background for Chuck for free. And, she got a shameless plug from Chuck on this podcast. Not bad!

During the holidays of 2008 Dell sold more than $1M through Twitter. People were tweeting about promotions during the holidays, only available to Dell’s Twitter followers.

I personally have made several valuable connections on Twitter as I use it for relationship building in my social media marketing plan.

Twitter provides access to your community and to your extended community through a multiplier affect.

Twitter is like a marketing megaphone due to its exponential reach.

Many businesses can strengthen their brand through Twitter.

Do you know any businesses doing a great job on Twitter? Please write about them at by blog.
Bernie Borges
@berniebay

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Article Tags: blue suede shoes, building relationships, company promotion, correlation, followers, ford motor, ford motor company, human voice, media marketing, networking platform, new accounts, prominence, q4 report, shoe store, social networking, social web, street journal article, twitter, wall street journal, word of mouth



Related Forum Posts
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.) You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic? - I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products? - How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Re: Social Media Works If You Do It Right... - Hi Michelle, Ah, but it seems hashtags are still being used by a lot of people - including Twitter! So I would still use them for your keywords. It's just that if you are searching for something on Twitter you can either go the #hashtag route, or do a direct search on the Twitter homepage. I guess you could use #hashtags when searching on the Twitter homepage as well! DH


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