Twitter is a popular social networking, micro-blogging service that allows users to post 140 character or less messages known as tweets. Those tweets are then publicly displayed on the author’s profile and are delivered to that author’s followers. Tweets fall into one of several categories, from spam and self-promotion to news, conversation and sharing. As Twitter increases in popularity and more business and consumers jump on the bandwagon, you may be asking yourself, “How can Twitter help my business?”
Find New Customers
If you were a real estate agent and you knew that 100 people that wanted to buy a new home were standing in line somewhere in your town, wouldn’t you be there? You bet your ass you would! If those same 100 people were on Twitter looking to move to your town, why wouldn’t you want to connect with them there? Twitter search is a powerful feature. We live in an information NOW world. Imagine someone posting the following tweet: “Got the job! Looking for a home in Greenville NC. I start in two weeks. Yay!” If I was a real estate agent in Greenville NC, this would be gold to me. This user just sent an open invitation for you to contact them. They are in the market for a house and need help from someone who is knowledgeable in the area. Ask yourself this question, how many people on twitter right now are looking for your product or service? Can you afford to ignore them?
Connect With Current Customers
You may be surprised to find out that your customers are already using twitter. They may be talking about your products and services, or sharing the bad (or hopefully good!) experience they had with you. You should be listening and searching for people that are talking about you. Take time to engage these folks. If they share a good experience or a nice comment about you, be sure to thank them for the positive publicity. If the opposite is true, and they are complaining about your service or product, use Twitter as a service recovery tool and see if you can make it right. If you go out of your way to make them happy, chances are that they will also share this positive experience.
Keep an Eye On Your Competition
How many of you have called a competitor and posed as a potential customer to get a quote on a service? Do you visit the websites of your competition, register for their email newsletters and ride by their offices to see what they are up to? If they are on twitter, you should be interested in what they are doing there as well. What they share could be of value to you. They could be sharing insider tips, disclosing who their newest customers are, pitching a new idea, or even talking about how bad their business is doing (let’s hope not – but hey, you never know!). If any of this information would give you an edge over them, you should be listening. Remember this when you jump into the game though – They can see you too!
Get New Ideas and Other Valuable Information
Twitter can be a steady stream of new ideas, content, tips and resources. There are thought leaders and mavericks for your community on twitter already, sharing daily. You never know what you might be missing if you aren’t following them. The old saying used to be, “time is money.” In today’s world, information is money!
As you can see, there are a variety of business uses for Twitter. If you have never even taken the time to look at Twitter, you will be amazed at the amount of conversation and information you are missing. According to research from eMarketer, Twitter will surpass 18 million users by the end of 2009. How long can you afford to resist this shift in the way we communicate? Join the conversation!
