Twitter Talks Business

Twitter recently released a tutorial http://business.twitter.com/twitter101 specifically focusing on how to use Twitter if you are a business.  So far there are six sections of the “Special Guide” and each is short, sweet, and salient.  The six sections are:

I’ve been on the fence about Twitter because I initially saw it as public texting and I really only text with my sons.  I didn’t think the public really would be interested in my illuminating words such as “whr r u?” and “dinner now.”  However, the attention Twitter has received from recent international incidents and some gentle prodding from some of my friends on the West Coast has me looking more closely at Twitter.  As a person who is interested in communications and marketing, Twitter is a pretty fascinating subject.  Did you know that Twitter had 4.42 million unique visitors in December 2008 and is on pace to hit 50 million in December 2009?  Can you believe that growth?  Just to compare, it took the top four television shows combined in last week’s Nielsen ratings to hit 50 million viewers.  That’s a pretty nice space to be in at no direct cost for a business.

Here’s a quote from Twitter 101:  A Special Guide for Business that captures why you may want to look at Twitter for your business even if you aren’t all that interested in it personally:

“Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great--or disappointing--experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.”

The key reasons a business might add Twitter to its overall communications portfolio are:

What I don’t think we think enough about is what it takes to dive into Twitter or any other social media pool.  The platform may be free and the amount of time to write and post a 140-character tweet is not all that time consuming, but the overall strategy of how and why to use Twitter for your business is not so simple.  If you read the Best practices and the Case studies sections of Twitter 101, you’ll see that you do need to take a little time to set yourself up properly, learn Twitter norms, and think about who you want your business to be on Twitter.  How often will you tweet?  How personal will you be?  Who are you going to follow?  How many people from your company will be tweeting?  Bottom line, whether you are a sole proprietor, a small business, or an international conglomerate, Twitter is on the radar and you need a plan.  This initial tutorial from Twitter is a good place to start.