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How to put your business on Twitter

Posted on 19 Mar 2009 at 17:05

Twitter is the youngest of the main social networks. User numbers aren't as high as some of its rivals, but it's growing at a phenomenal rate - especially in the UK.

Twitter is actually a painfully simple idea, and works a bit like text messaging. Users post messages (called 'tweets' on Twitter) of up to 140 characters, which can either be of a general nature or directed to a particular user by preceding the message with @username, and that's pretty much it!

There are several key demographic groups using Twitter, but in general you'll find users are young, professional, cosmopolitan, and both media- and tech-savvy.

Although Twitter boasts a fair number of celebrities (Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Al Gore), it doesn't seem to be infested (or at least not yet) by the Hello and OK brigade - sleb-watching seems to be quite civilised, and if truth be told, quite boring.

What many people don't realise is that almost everything they say on Twitter is said in public, even when they are having a one-to-one conversation. The Twitter APIs and search tools will still be able to find their tweets. For a vivid example of this go to SearchTwitter.com, search for stephenfy, and you'll see the huge avalanche of messages that people send to the poor chap, and quickly realise that there's simply no way he can read them all.

TWITTER TIPS FOR BUSINESSES

Talk to your customers
The public visibility of tweets is important both in terms of being careful with anything you publish, and also your ability to search what others are saying - perhaps they are talking about your products? That provides a great opportunity to interact with your customers.

For example, one of the PC Pro team recently had a problem with a UPS delivery. In their frustration they tweeted "Hey UPS, where's the parcel you were supposed to deliver yesterday?" Within a few minutes a representative from UPS had replied, asking "Good Morning. This is Thomas with UPS Interactive Communications. Anything I can do to help?"

Managing brand reputation is all about addressing issues like these quickly and efficiently, before they escalate, and Twitter is a brilliant tool for this. The company was clearly searching for Tweets mentioning its name and acting upon them. The reply from Thomas at UPS was perfect, and his intervention was not only timely, it also resolved the delivery issue.

Don't become a bore
Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter doesn't require 'both party consent' before connections are made. Anyone can follow us at @pc_pro (our Twitter username) without us agreeing to share our outpourings with them.

This means that in many ways Twitter is analogous to a news feed, and in fact some companies simply tweet by squirting their existing RSS feed into Twitter. This is usually a big mistake. Firstly RSS headlines often look clumsy (and sometimes even rude) when lopped off at 140 characters, and secondly, Twitter works best when you use informal language and a less stuffy style than you'll find in a bog-standard news feed. You need to talk with the community, not at it.