By Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound
Twitter.
It's an unlikely name for a social networking site that some of
the largest companies in the world are using for customer
service, crisis communications, customer retention and one of
the cheapest and most powerful marketing tools on the planet.
The free microblogging service allows users to write messages,
up to 140 characters long, directly at the site at
Twitter.com,
via instant messaging, or through third-party applications such
as Facebook.
What is Twitter?
The service asks the question "What are you doing?" While many
people respond with things like "I'm taking off for lunch at
Panera's" or "I'm trying to repair my printer," others have
found a wide variety of ways to use it as a valuable business
tool.
Twitter is so named because the flow of updates is like the
chirping of a bird. When you send an update, it's called a
tweet. The people who tweet are called twitterers or tweeters,
not twits. And when you rebroadcast a message that has appeared
earlier, that's called a retweet.
When you sign up for Twitter, you get a page where your updates
are published, as well as those of the people you follow. The
concept of following is similar to adding friends on other
social sites. Other Twitter features include the ability to send
direct messages to your contacts and to mark tweets as favorites
so you can find them easily later.
Why Twitter Is Successful
One reason for Twitter's success is the wide array of methods
you can use for posting updates.
In addition to the web-based interface on the Twitter site
itself, users can take advantage of instant messaging or mobile
phones to send updates to their home page. In addition, there
are several Twitter mashups (web applications that combine
Twitter data with other data) that enhance the functionality of
the basic web interface. These tools allow you to update Twitter
from your desktop or from unsupported I'm clients, to post links
to photos, to search for particular keywords, to update Twitter
from your blog, to use it with other social networking sites,
and to track updates around particular topics.
How Businesses and Nonprofits Use Twitter
Businesses and nonprofits are experimenting with
dozens of
ways to use Twitter. Here are just a few of them:
- As a crisis communications
tool.
- To announce new products
and services.
- To promote your new
articles and blog posts.
- To follow journalists who
Twitter and find out what they think is important.
- To respond to media
coverage, good or bad
- To monitor what others are
saying about you and your brand
- To comment on journalists'
articles--particularly journalists who you are targeting
I'll bet you can come up with
at least three ideas on how you can use it. I hope you'll
follow me on Twitter by clicking on the "Follow" button
under my photo. I'll follow you, too.
Then tweet about how you're using Twitter. I'd love to see what
you're doing.
For dozens more ideas on how
businesses and nonprofits are using Twitter, see
"Special Report #52: How to Use Twitter for Business to Network,
Promote, Sell, Recruit & Profit."
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