Twitter for your business

The Twitter phenomenon is another example of a social networking application that has successfully evolved and grown to meet the needs of its participating community.  For those who are not actively engaged in the Twittersphere, the hesitation to participate is usually put down to a distaste for inane posts about people walking from point A to point B*. For Twitterers however, the medium can be addictive. Twitter provides a convenient place for sharing information, venting frustrations, self-promotion and seeking advice.  This combination of positive and negative communication with an extended community makes it both a high-impact and high-risk place to take your business.

Twitter to engage your customers

Can Twitter be used for engaging your customers or even promoting your business? The answer… it depends on who you are trying to reach and how you go about it.  The most distinguishing feature of Twitter is that it is a two-way fare.  Simple push communication will not work. Twitterers that simply push messages are regularly mocked, or just not followed.  If you want to use Twitter you must be prepared to flex and interact with the community you adopt.

Engaging in Twitter requires a little creativity, a thick skin, a little bribery and above all - respect for your followers and those that you follow.

Don't be a commitment phobe!

An active Twitter stream is an interesting Twitter stream.  Post relevant and regular tweets and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the number of people that follow you.  It is about building loyalty and amassing the kind of followers who are likely to give you word of mouth promotion when the opportunity arises.

Posting tweets is one way to keep your head in this game but just as important is to monitor what people might be saying about your business.  If you have undertaken some advertising, or other campaigning that might cause a spike in conversations about your brand, then Twitter can be a very helpful place to monitor what your customers are saying about it.  Providing a helpful hashtag in your advertising and other material can make it easier to monitor the conversation.

Master the hash tag

The hashtag is a great example of how Twitter has evolved to suit its needs of it community.  As Twitter does not grouping posts, users can instead mark their posts with a particular 'tag' preceded with a # symbol (e.g. #ausvotes) .  If a critical mass of people use a common hashtag in response to a particular event, idea or emotion, than this makes it very easy for Twitterers to search and read a rich stream of relevant posts. 

A common question is "who decides what hashtag to use" and "what's the correct format for a hashtag".  The answer is "You/We/They/I do!" and "Anything you like!".  In some instances conversations spring up about what hashtag to use, consensis is quickly reached and off the conversations goes. 

Suggesting hashtags in your tweets, on your website or even in your advertising is a way of making it easy for your customers to talk about you - and for you to hear what they have to say.

Get yourself in their Twitter stream

A good way to use twitter for your business is to get your business or product into the conversations of others.  An example might be a small competition with prizes for the best Twitter Haiku post about an event that includes a specific hashtag.  Or it might be sharing some video that is relevant to your business or product and making it easy for others to share or post.

Getting into the twitter stream of your customers is about encouraging word of mouth communication. Give them somewhere to go after that conversation is started by integrating activity on your website, blog or even your showroom/shopfront.

Take care of your Tweeps.

For those that do choose to follow you it important to respect the fact that your posts go into their twitter stream so give them something interesting to Retweet to their followers. Make it interesting and not simply promotional.  Building a community of tweeps slowly builds a following for your business that becomes a useful way of spreading word of mouth communication.

* Such Twitter behaviour was recently satirised by the comedy group The Chaser and turned into a source of fun when people started to post inane comments with the tag #tweetlikeTonyBurke