Is Twitter for You?
February 23rd, 2009
As I watched late night coverage of the plane crash in Buffalo the other night, I was intrigued to hear a gentleman on Fox News, a neighbor close to the crash scene being interviewed. A Fox News producer got in touch with him when he saw the man’s Twitter updates about the crash. Brought home to me once more how information gathering has changed radically in the last months and years.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Twitter, it is basically a way to communicate short messages very quickly. According to Twitter’s homepage, it 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?”
Twitter allows the ability to search on a phrase, so that you can find updates that users have left public to just about any query. This is how the Fox News producer for the Buffalo plane crash neighbor.
You just set up an account and you are ready to start sending updates. There is a 140 character limit, so your updates must be brief. AOL’s Money and Finance recently published a very interesting article describing how Twitter may be on the brink of becoming one of the most profitable new internet ventures.
Figuring out how to use Twitter to grow your business might take a little imagination. Some ideas for business owners as well as job seekers can be found on The SEO Blog, but here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
*Set up an account for your business, promote sales and specials
*Monitor what is being said about you, your company or product
*Find out what consumers are looking for
*Do a search to find out what people like about a current special or product and perhaps prolong it’s availability
*Put out feelers for that person with the skill set you urgently need
It may seem like just the latest thing, but hey, it’s free (for now), it’s fun, it’s fast, and who knows what you might get out of it? And, if you are already tweeting for your business, drop me a line and let me know if it is working for you. I’d love to hear what kinds of things you are tweeting about.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Hey Geoff,
I would question Twitter and their profitability (financially speaking) at this point. They haven’t had any profit model up to this point, and have no intentions of adding one soon. The service has taken off recently, and as with any service that gains popularity, spammers start hitting it and companies try and use it to advertise. While it is another potential avenue, companies would need to think long/hard about their approach on twitter.
Twitter is much more personalized in the sense that most people use it and connect with their other friends and read short snippets. The slightest bit of ‘noise’ in the midst of that can be easily turned off (or worse, blocked). It isn’t an avenue of ‘throw mud at the wall to see what sticks’, as people can easily filter it out and ignore it (you can see this with an array of people who have tried going this route). Twitter is more personal than a myspace, facebook, etc – it has one single purpose, and when you try and interject in that one single purpose it can tend to leave a bad taste.
With that being said, it can still be useful (obviously). Companies can use it to search and see what other people are saying and be active in assisting people where necessary, or even finding passionate customers. Promoting things are good, but make sure you have different accounts to 1) build relationships, 2) promote. It makes it a pseudo RSS feed if people are interested and want to see it. There are many examples of this working for different companies (freshbooks, 37signals, authentic jobs, etc – to name a few).
Ultimately, one of the best ways companies can leverage it, without wasting time, is integrating with their API. This can allow them to seamlessly integrate with their website and services, and keep the communication stream open. A lot of ways to harness something like this…just a thought to add on to your already good ideas of utilizing twitter.
February 28th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Thanks Nate.
I agree on the profitability question. Most of these social sites will face that challenge. At some point it’ll be about making money.
I also agree with the comment on companies thinking long and hard about using it. If they aren’t going to use it for what it was intended for, and simply for advertising, it’ll be a waste of time. I think that holds true for just about any form of social media.
Thanks for the additional ideas!
February 13th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
[...] Twitter could threaten the News Industry. I’ve pointed out several times on this blog when Twitter or Facebook was the first or only source of news of a certain event. I think this will continue to happen just by the very nature of mobile media. [...]