March 29, 2010
10 Small Business Uses for Twitter
There are a plethora of uses for Twitter, communicating with: friends, family, celebrities, and customers. The first three uses are no-brainers, but how do you effectively undertake the fourth, communicating with customers/potential customers? Actually, that depends upon how large your business is as there are really two distinct categories of businesses that use Twitter: large companies & small companies.This post concerns Twitter for the latter category.
Why Tweet?
1. Track Terms. Use Twitter Search to monitor what is being said in a particular industry. In particular, you can create RSS feeds for each search term so that you can track everything that is being said about a particular topic .
2. Track Communities. Join Twibes to follow established threads of what people are saying about a particular topic.
3. Find Experts for Guest Blog Posts. Search for experts on a particular business topic and ask them to write a blog post about a specific issue related to that topic.
What Should You Tweet About?
4. Blog Posts. You can gain more exposure to possible readers of your blog posts by exposing your blog to Twitter users searching for, and following, particular topics. One very effective strategy is not just to post a link to a blog entry; rather, post a question and a link.
5. Local Events. If you have many local followers, you can inform them about events with which your business is involved.
6. Related, but Random Thoughts. This helps to humanize you as active Twitter users often despise canned & inhuman-feeling Tweets.
7. Relevant & Related Questions. People love to answer genuine questions on Twitter. In the process you will be exposing your Twitter account, and your business, to people interested in topics related to your business.
8. Re Tweet. Although this usage is a bit more attenuated & indirect, it helps show your followers that you aren’t only concerned about your business; rather, you are genuinely interested in the topic regardless of whether you are directly benefited.
9. Opinion Polls. You can ask people who are presumptively interested in your industry, they are likely your followers, what they think about a particular issue or question.
10. Teewtups. It is easy and quick to organize meet ups with like-minded and/or interested individuals. These can help to expand your business or identify and screen a pool of competent personnel.
What Should Be Your Tweet Style?
Make it Personal. Even though this is a business use, people who use Twitter expect a more informal, personal narrative as opposed to formal PR-like verbiage.
Make it short. Even though Tweets are limited to 140 characters, the more intriguing you make your tweets, the more likely people are to follow you and/or click on links in your tweets.
Although Twitter was not originally designed for business use, it really lends itself very well to such and is effective at exposing your small business to even more possible customers/clients.
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