Twitter: how can a business use it?
"Twitter - so what is the point?" Being involved in digital PR, this is a challenge I hear all the time, partly driven by articles appearing in newspapers written by armchair pundits who don't use it but certainly have a negative opinion. At thebluedoor we use Twitter alot. Each of us have our own Twitter account and we also have a rather underused company account too. My Twitter name is @AbigailH - please do follow me and let me know if I can help with any Twitter questions that you have.
In order to understand Twitter and its benefits I would advise that you stop reading articles in papers and start using it. Here is some tips that might help you get started:
- Go to Twitter - it's free - and register your own name (or as close as possible) and your business and its brands. Even if you don't intend to use the latter, owning them means that you are protecting them from someone else who might have malicious intentions to spam your brand
- Watch the demonstration video, it is a great starting point
- Fill in your profile and don't forget to put a link to your website or blog
- Use a free application e.g.: TweetDeck / Twirl in order to see conversation
- Follow @hashtags and create business relevant hashtag e.g.: #Habitat (* see below). Hashtags help conversations to be visible
- Follow @MrTweet in order to ‘find’ followers / friends
- Live-Tweet events / news / general industry information, as well as key business information to gather more attention
- Perhaps add links into your Tweets that point into your business’s key online areas. Remember to use key words – there are SEO benefits in Twitter
- Track the ROI by looking at your website's analytics
- Refer to key opinion formers and include their Twitter handle e.g.: @stephenfry. If they are using TweetDeck they might see them and sometimes (if you are lucky!) respond / engage accordingly
- Twitter is great for testing ideas, gathering feedback, and asking questions
- Remember that this is Web 2.0 i.e.: it is talking and listening, not just pushing out company news! – otherwise people will not be interested
* = Habitat got into hot water earlier this week by using inappropriate hashtags such as #iranelection in order to piggy-back a topic that was being discussed (trending).
Twitter does not replace face-to-face communication, but is a very powerful digital networking and collaboration tool for businesses. And in the spirit of that final point, I'm attending tomorrow's TweetCamp in London and am very much looking forward to meeting up with people (many for the first time) who are active on Twitter. If you are going, I can't wait to meet you. And if you're not, there is sure to be lots of live Tweeting going on, so watch out for the #tweetcamp tagged Tweets.
Labels: #tweetcamp, Digital networking, digital PR, Habitat, thebluedoor, Tweetcamp, Tweetdeck, Twirl, Twitter
posted by thebluedoor at
13:45
2 Comments:
Hi Abigail, I found you via @BenjaminEllis and @JenniWheller! Great that you mention how thebluedoor uses Twitter but your accounts are not obvious - just had a look at a bunch of your profile pages and your IDs are not listed. Might be an idea to make your IDs more prominent?
I had been intending to get to #tweetcamp but I now have other plans - maybe we should have a more local Farnborough / Farnham tweetup sometime :-) it would be great to meet you folks
I totally agree with you. Thanks for the hint and it will be done!
It's a shame you're not coming tomorrow :-( Definitely a Farnham / Farnborough / Camberley tweetup would be a great idea. We'll sort that out too and post up the details on our blog!
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