What’s All The Fuss About Twitter?

Employee Requirement to Tweet
Many employers are posting the requirement for new hires to be twitter efficient and update their tweets regularly. For those jobs in Marketing and Emerging Markets this is quickly becoming considered essential. Most recently, Best Buy encouraged hundreds of employees to handle customer service and store promotions via twitter.

Reaching Out to Customers
Social networking has created a world where unhappy customers can, quite literally, rant their irritation to the world. The affects of a relatively harmless rage and what it can do to a company's reputation in the day of super speedy communication is mind boggling. Smart companies are the ones using twitter to reach out to customers - particularly those who are unhappy and vocal about it. It's a great new way to build customer relations and solve dissatisfaction. A lot of companies are employing social media teams to monitor twitter traffic to put out fire before it has a chance to spread. A quick response to an angry ranting can calm an upset customer and adds a personalized touch. Companies who have tapped the "personalized touch" noticed a considerable shift in customer attitude that probably sent alert signal to companies not active in this ball game.

Use it as an Affiliate Marketing Tool
Download twhirl - it's a little instant message screen that shows all the action going on in twitter. If someone says something interesting, reply to them or ask people questions and start interacting with the best in the business. If you're looking for an real estate agent, make a tweet saying "I need help with a real estate agent in your local area". You will be amazed at the response you will get within a few a minutes. While IMing people on thwirl won't help you make money that second, it will help you build relationships with other people in your industry. If you make conversation with the right people, you'll start to feel like you know them well enough. This can lead to taking your business one step higher, you can meet up with these people and maybe even talk about affiliate marketing. Potentially then we can help each other make some more money. We all know networking in affiliate marketing is key...twittering is actually a great way to start.

Making Money on Twitter
Chris Russo, a sports entrepreneur, founded Fantasy Sports Ventures in 2006, and is now getting a piece of McDonald's marketing millions with Twitter! Russo's total revenue is expected to double this year to $10 million, thanks to the burger giant and Twitter. If Russo can double his fortunes, you can too!

Make Money for Tweeting
If there is a username called "SEOjobsLA" - any person looking for a SEO job in LA could be a friend of this list, and be notified instantly of any new tech jobs. If you have a list of about 3,000 users that are the friends of "SEOjobsLA", that means you have prospective tech employees in the area too. A company would love to get their latest tech job out to those prospects, so they can find a hire - thus, they go to a web page you have setup, and they paste a message, a URL to full job details. You can charge the employer for posting this.

Same with a list (username) like "Macy's". People could pay to broadcast their message (Macys sale - starts 9 pm tomorrow morning till 18th Oct, 10pm) to all of the friends of "Macy's".

Charge for Reading Your Tweets
You could have a subscription-based service where you charge $x for people to be your friend, only if they pay do they have access to your tweets (You verify their subscriptions - and if they haven't paid for the month, you remove them as a friend from your Twitter account). A newspaper might do this to give you access to the news first or a travel agent who know the tricks of the trade will give you advice on how you can pay for an economy ticket but travel first class could send them to you...

Call this the business invaded twitter year. The service which can be used on any cell phone or computer has been a hit almost since its launch. It keeps you updated and connected with thousands and thousands of people instantly. It facilitates drive your brand and communicate with customers in a way that you've never been able to before. Smart entrepreneurs are now doing deals in 140 characters or less on Twitter, are you?