Aug
3

How do YOU use Twitter for Business?

23 Comments

Twitter is obviously a hot topic right now. Everyone’s using it, or at least trying it out. It’s becoming part of business’ daily operations, and I’m looking for stories of how people have used Twitter for their business. What’s worked? What hasn’t?

I’d love to hear your success stories and your horror stories. Leave a comment below!

Posted in Blog Twitter
23 Comments Posted by Cali Lewis

23 Responses to "How do YOU use Twitter for Business?"

  • Brian S says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:43 am

    No horror stories… yet :-)

    As far as my business goes, I use it mainly for announcements, which come from the same place as news in my RSS feed. I use a custom script, though, not twitterfeed or anything like that.

    Not all of it is automated, though. I’ve posted things that don’t come from the site announcement feed, and there is the occasional two-way conversation.

  • Wayne says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:47 am

    I have been using twitter to learn more about my craft rather than make money. I am a professional (internal) web developer for Comcast and I am following #css #jquery #php #html5 #javascript so as new items develop and new tutorials come out, I can be on the ball and learn. This keeps me secure in my job position, so I am using twitter to stay in business, not to gain business.

  • Eric J says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:48 am

    I wrote a Perl Script that randomly picks out of 10 different tweets to visit our sponsors web sites thats in a Cron job that will run every day at 8:00 am. I also have a twitter module on our frontpage that displays all our followers tweets.

  • Justin says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Do you mean within their business or as promotion / part of their business strategy?

    As a twitter user, rather than a business, this is a fine line. Between the bots and the businesses I think that Twitter is slowly be irrevocably being hurt.

    There are *some* great business uses of twitter. http://www.usetrackthis.com/ and http://www.vark.com would be a good examples.

    But too many businesses simply use it as a lame spam marketing tool.

  • joyce weiss says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:50 am

    Prospects enjoy the links that I send to them plus my own linked articles on work/life balance or conflict resolution. Building relationships is what it is all about. I just heard your speech about blogging that Tom Antion mentioned in @SpeakerNetNews. You gave me some valueable tips. Thanks Cali.

  • Steve Jones says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:55 am

    We are a news/publishing site, so we use it to announce new content, interesting discussions, maybe places that our staff will attend.

  • Alan Chamberlain says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:55 am

    A little over a year ago I proposed creating a coworking space as an adjunct function of our venture catalyst operation. As the project manager, I began researching the coworking movement, and went to visit @missrogue to learn about her Citizen Space operation in SF. She was generous with her observations and experience, and I told her I wanted to keep up with what she’s doing. She replied “oh just follow me on Twitter.”

    I’ve been using online forums since the late 80s, so I’m not a complete luddite. I’ve had a profile on LinkedIn since they opened their doors. But my impression of Twitter was that it was a gossip engine for adolescent shut-ins. But I created an account, and began following @missrogue and a few other Open Source luminaries.

    And at first it was just what I expected; “OMG I can’t believe my hair looks like this” and “saw the cutest shoes at Macy’s” and “meeting Jen for lunch”, etc. And then, “registering for this conference”.

    I followed the link, and it was a conference on entrepreneurship. That’s *my* corner. Why don’t I know about this conference? And OMG it’s in two days! I registered and went.

    Very interesting; I was by three touchdowns and a safety the oldest person at the event. They had a great program, and while I didn’t learn much about entrepreneurship, I did learn why I never saw these folks at *our* conferences; we weren’t using the communications channels they were listening to.

    Since then I’ve become a social networking fool. By following other coworking pioneers like @alexknowshtml, @tonybgoode, @juliegomoll and others, I’ve learned a lot about growing our coworking studio. By following other thought leaders in the tech space, I stay on top of emerging developments in the entrepreneurship sector. And by tweeting announcements of our livestreaming webcast episodes, I’m building an audience of early adopter types.

    Turns out, Twitter is a *trust* engine for digital pioneers. And an invaluable business tool.

  • Eugene Cuprin says:
    August 3, 2009 at 9:58 am

    I was trying to contact Cali Lewis over the tweet – no success.
    I wanted to draw more visitors to the website – no result
    I was seeking for investors and partners – maybe later.
    So far I did not feel any improvement that Twitter claims to bring.
    Celebrity and tycoons are followed. Not just in Twitter, everywhere… :)
    You have to spend your valuable time optimizing your twitting to acheive results. If you have extra manpower it can help. If you are start-up it is likely a waist of time.

  • Paul Lindemann says:
    August 3, 2009 at 10:28 am

    One successful use is to build community around a trade show.

    Our little Electronic Design Automation industry — developers of tools for electronic circuit and system designers — just had its single biggest annual event, the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Twitter search on #46DAC to see the many active tweets and discussions related to this technical conference and vendor exhibition.

    Very few firms used it for outright promotion or PR flacking as you might expect. Instead, you’ll mostly see examples of effective personal communication and supportive sharing that could never quite happen without Twitter.

    Business-wise, Twittering for my client provided a whole new way to build positive awareness, with a direct connection to some of the industry’s key influencers that was much more effective than a small firm can achieve with traditional PR. Twittering for myself helped build awareness of me as a smart marcomm consultant — hopefully! — but more importantly helped me feel a greater connection to the industry and the people shaping it than I have felt in some 20 years of participating in this show.

  • Bay area golf course says:
    August 3, 2009 at 10:31 am

    Sunol Valley Golf Club – The first thing we did a few weeks back at our golf course is place our Twitter feed on our site (see: http://www.sunolvalley.com. This has increased exposure for us. Recently, we had our first foursome come out as a direct result of Twitter. Instead of using it only as a mechanism to send specials though, we are trying to engage local golfers in conversations. It’s working and we have many plans ahead – especially when we redesign our site this fall.

  • Ron says:
    August 3, 2009 at 10:35 am

    For business, I primarily use twitter to find out about the hottest security related issues, like worms, viruses, etc … so I guess I use it to pull data, but I don’t use it to push data. I only push info for personal info, like hobbies and recreation.

  • Rich Driscoll says:
    August 3, 2009 at 11:03 am

    We use Twitter both to promote our practice but to also keep up with trends in the industry. Twitter is an effective way to make announcements about new blog articles or breaking, industry related news. Twitter is like having numerous human edited news feeds feeding you the latest information. In a nutshell we can easily keep up to date on the latest industry related news.

  • Andrew Yeager-Buckley says:
    August 3, 2009 at 11:12 am

    I use twitter to send out product updates and to prompt conversations. More and more customers are unsubscribing themselves from our e-mail list and choosing to receive updates through facebook or twitter, sometimes both.

  • Dave Peck says:
    August 3, 2009 at 11:12 am

    Lets see.. I build my business on twitter and get my clients via twitter. Then there was the time I used twitter to pretend to be a blonde 26yr old girl. Now I work for a marketing company and deal with major brands from Wells Fargo, UC Berkeley, George Lynch, NPR and others

  • Trevor Current says:
    August 3, 2009 at 11:34 am

    As an avid photographer and creator of the photo sharing site http://ushareimages.com, I’ve been using Twitter as a way to meet other photographers who share in my passion. I focus most of my initial tweets around breaking photography news and photo industry related topics which have spawned some great conversations. Together we share stories, ideas and techniques to help us become better photographers and at the same time I’m building awareness of our photo sharing site. So far it’s worked out nicely and we have a great group of people signing up for our service. To better serve our community, we have many new features in the works for our site that will help Twitter users share their photos and build their own communities like no other service available today.

    The key to success using Twitter for business is “giving”. Become a source of useful information, lend an ear and give advice and interact with the community don’t just sit on the sidelines. Having a huge number of followers looks very impressive but if you aren’t interacting with them in a two way conversation you’re missing the whole point of being “social”. Without that relationship you’re just a salesperson knocking on doors, but interact with the community and the doors will open.

    Cali, you asked the question but you’re the perfect example of how to do it. You “give” with your podcasts, blogs and tweets and in return you have a community of almost 50k Twitter followers waiting to interact with you. That’s how you do it!

  • Jim Seybert says:
    August 3, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    Twitter is one of the tools I use to extend my networking to people I don’t know. The number of people who follow me on Twitter whom I do not know is not much higher than the number of “unknown” friends on facebook. Twitter for me is about professional contacts, whereas FB is about professional contacts with whom I have a more casual relationship.
    I just started a series of blog posts about my Twitter/Facebook deliberations;
    http://budurl.com/q6wgcl

  • Sweetwater Sound says:
    August 3, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    I tweet for Sweetwater Sound. We’re currently using Twitter in conjunction with YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace to interact with the community and expose the many facets of Sweetwater Sound to more people. Beyond our customers, we’re also interacting with recording artists and their fans, bloggers, organizations, the press, communities, and others. We feel it’s important to communicate with our customers and the community by whatever means they are utilizing to get information – not just communicating with the tools we’ve always used simply because we’ve always used them.

    Because we work with musical instruments and gear for recording or pro audio, and because our clients use this gear for so many different applications, we have a lot of fun and relevant topics to discuss, from software how-to’s and recording techniques to cool new products or just fun music-related topics.

    First, it’s important to note that we DON’T use Twitter to blast a never-ending stream of deals into cyberspace. Using Twitter, we tweet real-time updates on new product announcements, new product arrivals, notable deals, and highlights of unique gear (like limited edition guitars). We link to relevant articles and videos (not just our own, but relevant articles and videos posted by others too), announce software updates, and post about events happening here locally at our facility as well. We also ask our followers what sorts of things they’d like us to tweet about, and respond with more of those sorts of tweets.

    Our communication is not a one-way street – with Twitter, we can interact in a variety of ways with manufacturers, customers, gear and music bloggers – including forwarding interesting posts and commenting or directly replying to their posts both privately and publicly.

    Besides making sure our Twitter communication is two-way, another very important aspect of Twitter is staying in tune with what’s being said. That means watching for mentions of our company’s name and mentions of the names of brands & products we carry. This has been the most effective means for us to identify customer service issues, and we’ve been able to communicate with customers, whether via Twitter or directly, with very positive results (for instance, we had some interaction with social marketing blogger @heidimiller about a defective product she’d purchased from us, and it turned into a pretty interesting customer service story).

    People are pleasantly surprised to find out that a company is paying attention and that we’re willing to respond to them directly and address their concerns. It’s also really fun to share in their excitement when they tweet about a recent purchase arriving on their doorstep, or the latest copy of Sweetwater’s ProGear Directory in their mailbox.

    What’s worked best? Real-time announcements related to new product arrivals or promotions, links to how-to articles, and direct interaction to resolve customer concerns. What hasn’t worked so well? Some products generate less interest than others, and local-interest items have, well, only local interest. : )

    Thanks for asking the question, Cali. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the replies so far and I’m sure this will generate a lot of great conversation.

    John Grabowski
    @sweetwatersound

  • Matt Rude says:
    August 3, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    At work, we mostly use Twitter as a nice, always up, network status page, and also a quick way of sending txt messages to a large group of people. It works vary well for that use.

  • Cassandra Nicholson says:
    August 4, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    Greenie2Steps, a NEW company that makes whimsical wall art that is both educational and eco-friendly, uses Twitter through the avatar of Greenie, the eco-friendly elephant from TelleyGreen (@Greenie2Steps).

    In addition to pre-launching the NEW, fun, educational and eco-friendly wall art for children of all ages (Officially released on Wednesday, July 29 for viewing and sale at http://www.greenie2steps.com) @Greenie2Steps
    publishes information about the business, engages with the community to get their feedback and opinion, provides special offers and coupons, and shares news & fun facts about animals and the earth, as well as tips on making out planet a better place to live!

    We’d love to share more of our story if you are interested! We found GBTV through switchingGranny!

  • Zackary Hubble says:
    January 18, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    If you miss a shot, do not think of what you did wrong. . . just go to the next shot and think of what you must do right ! This advice is far easier to give than to get you to actually do it. When you hit an errant shot, don’t say “what did I do wrong?” Instead, ask what you “didn’t do right.” Thinking about doing it “wrong,” can mislead and confuse you. Keep your focus on executing shots the right way instead of the wrong way. Do not think while making your stroke, do your thinking prior to the stroke. Because you cannot think about any more than one detail at one time, it is futile to think at all during your swing. Keep your mind clear and just make solid contact.

  • Burton Haynes says:
    June 12, 2010 at 8:17 am

    Hey, Love the post! Keep it up, I will definatley be coming back soon!! =)

  • Elissa Jenn says:
    June 17, 2010 at 10:22 pm

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  • Jules Pon says:
    June 29, 2010 at 4:47 am

    This is by far one of the most interesting posts you’ve done. i disagree on some parts though the majority of the parts you added I can understand where you were coming from.

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