6 part series – Topic 2 – Twitter
You can read topic 1 on LinkedIn here.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: what are you doing ? Source – Twitter.com – Please feel free to follow me http://twitter.com/amitdesai
Twitter is a micro blogging platform which allows you to publish short messages of less than 140 characters through different mediums like web, IM and mobile. Also there are wonderful API’s that can be used to enhance your twitter experience
I have been using twitter for some time now and strongly believe that it can be used for much more than just sharing your status. The reason I love twitter is because it cuts the whole process of connecting with people as compared to other networking sites and lets you get down to business straightaway and that’s connections and conversations.
Twitter is primarily used for staying in touch with your contacts via status update but I slowly see a trend emerging where smart and forward looking companies have started using twitter for business. My logic says, it’s a great idea as we consumers are using twitter so why should the marketing and PR guys stay behind. Twitter can prove to be an excellent avenue to reach your customers.
Twitter can be used for (apart from its core function of status update):
- Personal use
- Business use
Personal
- Stay in constant touch with friends and family – tweet about your day to day activity to keep your friends and family informed about what you are doing. You can also keep yourself updated about them.
- Search and Connect with people who have something in common with you. Start following them, share daily updates and build stronger connections and expand your personal network.
- Marketing yourself – Use twitter to strengthen your brand online. The key is to express yourself in less than 140 characters. Always think before you tweet or else it might harm your personal image. One mistake and the world would know about it.
- Drive traffic to your blog, website, social and business profiles online and much more
- Voice your opinion: tweet about things you like, things you don’t like, share your experiences about a place, product or a service and the list just doesn’t end. Twitter can really make you feel powerful
Business
- Promote your products and services – Companies are increasingly using twitter to promote their offerings. I feel this is a good way to reach highly targeted audiences and create brand awareness. The perfect example is Dell.
- Announcement and updates – There are many companies who announce various schemes and offers via twitter like Starbucks. Also twitter can be excellent for news reporting companies like Reuters
- Hiring – companies can use twitter as a mechanism to advertise open positions. Perfect example is world leading staffing company Manpower
- Communicate with audience – Receive feedback, learn about your brand, gather appreciation, capture constructive criticism all this and more can be achieved using twitter. Smart companies are already riding the twitter wave General Motors & Kodak
- Customer service – Now this one takes the cake, if companies can setup twitter accounts to resolve customer queries it’s going to be great. Imagine you tweet about your problem and you get an instant tweet back with the status. Read about it here Getsatisfaction.com
- Monitor your brand via http://search.twitter.com/ best way to search for what people are saying about your brand. I was planning to buy a Sony cybershot and I used this to get a lot of information about the product. Most importantly there were some good and some not so good things said about the camera. The idea is to monitor how people perceive your brand. Results here http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sony+cybershot
- Mashable came up with a list of best brands using twitter, have a look : http://mashable.com/2009/01/21/best-twitter-brands
Tools I use for twitter:
- Twitter fox - Firefox addon for twitter
- Tweet Deck - consolidate view of all twitter activity
- Twitme – post your wordpress blog entire to twitter
- Twitter search – search twitter for anything – my favourite
- Twitter grader – grade your ranking on twitter, much like Google page rank for websites
- Jott.com – Tweet by voice
- TweetScan -scan all tweets for your subject.
- Mr. Tweet - analytics for your twitter account, again one of my favourites.
I have shared my experience and research on using twitter, if you wish to know more in detail on how to go about using twitter then download this E-book its gives a step by step guide to use twitter effectively.
Please feel free to follow me http://twitter.com/amitdesai
Happy Tweeting
Related posts:
- twitcam and camtweet to offer live video streaming on twitter
- My research and experience on how to manage multiple twitter accounts.
- 6 part series – How to effectively use social media applications.
- Now money can buy friends, followers, connections, fans on social media sites
- Google Wave – web based real time communication platform
- TweetDeck + TwitterJobSearch = JobDeck – helps you find your next job.
- Internet usage Statistics in 2009
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Comments
I use Twitter for all of the articles and comments I write. I have a friendfeed tool that automatically adds everything I do to Twitter. I think this is very good for clients look at when deciding whether or not to hire me for their projects.
Yeah i firmly believe twitter is a great marketing tool and can really help clients to know more about you and your services.
Nice articles but it would be much easier for your readers if you put the 6 part series with a TOC or related topic links on each post of the series
i gust want to say some thing “great job”
Update your Twitter randomly according to your intrest Or, from Rss Feed Or, from your own tweet message list Or, Any combination of the above three http://feedmytwitter.com
Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.
a must read for twitter user