Micro blogging, just what is the point?

Businesses now have an equally cost effective worldwide source to tap into, to expand their consumer base, send out corporate news, events, financial and charitable successes, or even to clear up a colleague’s business blunder, with Twitter all of the above is just several keystrokes away.

Top business uses for Twitter:

Referrals: The more information (useful) or service you provide on Twitter and actively Tweet, the more people will become followers and your circle of influence will become larger, faster than imagined.

Instant exposure: No other tool out there on the web is more powerful than Twitter for this purpose only. Used the right way this is one of its biggest benefits –the right way being: don’t say anything you don’t want to say, consider your community and always think twice about sending a message.

Building contacts and influence: Twitter has mass appeal and allows you access to millions of people, but target your audience correctly and it can have instant results.

Build up a buzz: Ahead of an event, announcement, conference, product launch or piece of research you can build up a sense of anticipation and excitement directly to the audience that matters. If you promise and don’t deliver on Twitter, as in business you will fail and instantly lose followers.

Live tweet: During live events create additional buzz and transparency by live tweeting what’s happening, rate speakers at events, exchange thoughts with people in the same room and give instant feedback or comments.

Excellent brand builder: Tweetdeck allows you, your customers and your employees to see buzzwords and search any word to see whether or not your company is being spoken about. This reinforces the importance of transparency and immediacy on Twitter, and lets you see clearly how much people are talking and what they’re saying about your brand. If your employees can see who is saying what about the business they work for, it can help to improve advocacy and engagement.

Brevity, brevity and brevity: Corporate emails are well known for being long and tedious, so if you can write a clear message in 140 characters or less, surely you can put email in the dustbin forever? Perhaps, in an ideal, clutter-free world, but there are concerns about privacy and a 140-character limit doesn’t allow for much detail.

Follow competitors or sales leads: A great way to see what your rivals are up to but again, be honest about who you are.

Crisis communications: Twitter is a fantastic tool to use during a crisis and can mitigate the situation immediately, or reduce damage if your followers are well targeted. So make sure you have a defined list of who your target audience should be.

Customer service: Allows you to respond immediately to customer queries and complaints, but make sure it’s the right person/the right thought leader that’s answering.

Thought leadership: If you have someone in the company who can contribute in some way to a particularly important topic then empower them to tweet. Give them the go-ahead to represent the company.

Corporate communication: Short company announcements are very easily Tweetable, but question yourselves beforehand about how you should and could be engaging with your community.

Personally, I would urge you to persist because the benefits, although I believe mainly untapped, can be vast. Twitter and social media marketing go hand in hand. The vast flow, of well targeted information provided by you/your business is a key factor when you think about increasing your web presence and the flow of traffic to your site.

Visit us at New Wave SEO and request a free business analysis with one of our consultants.

Thanks,

Oscar Bos

New Wave SEO