Does Your Company Really Need To Be Using Twitter?

Many busi­ness own­ers are ask­ing: “Does my com­pany really need to be using twit­ter?” Before we answer that ques­tion, let’s exam­ine exactly what twit­ter is.

Sim­ply put, Twit­ter is a mini-blogging plat­form that you can use to send mes­sages of 140 char­ac­ters or less to fam­ily, friends, col­leagues, or just the gen­eral Web com­mu­nity at large, basi­cally it is a plat­form that allows peo­ple hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions online, to express them­selves to the world in 140 char­ac­ters or less.

It looks like this:

You can also choose to fol­low other Twit­ter com­mu­nity mem­bers’ posts, either by nav­i­gat­ing directly to the Twit­ter site, sub­scrib­ing to that par­tic­u­lar Twit­ter RSS feed, or get­ting Twit­ter posts sent to your mobile device (text mes­sag­ing fees will apply for this option; check with your provider).

On twit­ter, you will find peo­ple talk about every­thing from envi­ron­men­tal issues to what they ate for lunch. At first glance, it can seem over­whelm­ing, but it can actu­ally add tremen­dous value to your busi­ness and pro­vide a hefty return on investment.

Let me explain.

From a busi­ness stand­point, you and your com­pany can through twit­ter to get involved in these con­ver­sa­tions online, like use twit­ter to keep your cus­tomers apprised of your new prod­ucts or ser­vices, to sim­ply post other well-organized infor­ma­tion online with the abil­ity for vis­i­tors to leave feed­back or ask questions.

It is a great way to fire off a quick jolt of news if you don’t’ have a lot of time to write any­thing more sub­stan­tial (you can see my twit­ter feed at bblweb)

There are many cor­po­ra­tions nowa­days are on the twit­ter and work­ing toward to enhance their cus­tomer ser­vices, in the other words, they are using it to strengthen their CRM (cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment), example:

• B2B CRM com­pany Salesforce.com post cus­tomer suc­cess sto­ries Suc­cess­force (2,726 fol­low­ers)
• Sim­i­lar to Dell Ideas­t­orm, Star­bucks uses Twit­ter to ask cus­tomers about ideas and to high­light pro­mo­tions: MyS­tart­buck­sideal (7,985 fol­low­ers)
• Event organ­is­ers are suc­cess­fuly using Twit­ter to pro­mote their events: W2e (17,994 fol­low­ers)
• The Twit­ter Top 100 shows many news orga­ni­za­tions such as CNN Break­ing, The New York Times and The Tele­graph within the Top 100 amongst the celebri­ties.
• With a tech audi­ence a Twit­ter feed with con­tri­bu­tions from dif­fer­ent ana­lysts or jour­nal­ists shows — For­rester ana­lyst Jowyang has over 52,834 followers.

So is it worth for you to be on the twit­ter and twit­ter­ing for your busi­ness? As always, the answer is “it depends”. But the short answer is “prob­a­bly not”.

What I mean is that even Twit­ter is a very hot social media mar­ket­ing tool to use, but there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. If you are sell­ing Medicare ser­vices, you aren’t likely to reach your audi­ence via Twitter.

But if you are an elected offi­cial and you want to rally your con­stituents behind a piece of leg­is­la­tion, Twit­ter may be the per­fect tool for keep­ing your sup­port­ers informed, minute by minute.

On the other hand, if you have a pop­u­lar blog, a pub­lisher or a smaller busi­ness posi­tion­ing your­self as inno­v­a­tive, I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend offer­ing Twit­ter as a choice for your sub­scribers beyond email and RSS feeds. It is also use­ful for web startup com­pa­nies and larger agen­cies to posi­tion their business.

Speak­ing of how to carry out your twit­ter­ing effi­ciency, you need to come out with a solid strat­egy with goals, guide­lines and tac­tics on the place before dive into the twit­ter sea. Ask your­self fol­low­ing these impor­tant questions:

• What is your ulti­mate goal?
• How are you going to achieve it?
• Who is going to run it? Use inter­nal staff or out­sourc­ing?
• What are the staff cost and how to con­trol it since some will get dis­tracted from their main job?
• How are you going to respond to neg­a­tive feed­back?
• Do you have a cri­sis plan in place?

It is impor­tant to find the right peo­ple to help you nav­i­gate twit­ter or other social media. If you are use out­sourc­ing, in your search for social media experts, keep in mind that indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that are already using twit­ter will have a great head start over those that are not.

Back to the orig­i­nal ques­tion: Does Your Com­pany Really Need To Be Using Twitter?

My answer is f you want to give cus­tomers choice, reach brand advo­cates and jour­nal­ists and so improve per­cep­tion of the brand, Twit­ter is a good low-cost addi­tion to your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing communications.

About the Author

Related Posts

• Brand and Marketing Trends for 2010
• Why Need to Learn Mobile Marketing?
• Too Bad: Facebook Blocked Twitter Account
• Who are the Big Spenders on Facebook and Twitter?
• Only 22 Percent of All Connections on Twitter are Reciprocal