Using Twitter for Business

This post corresponds to podcast Episode 13: Twitter for Business with Seth Resler, Founder of New England Social Media which is included in the Free Marketing Made Easy Core Program, accompanied by workbook and video tutorials that show you how to do this on your own.



In my last post about Using Facebook for Business I acknowledged that you don’t have all day to spend on social media. You might want to use something like Twitter (once you understand how useful it can be) but at the same time you’ve got the actual running of your business to do so you require a very practical approach. We understand.

This means we need to address automation: how you can actually batch your day or your week so that you set up your social media updates to go out automatically. But before we get into that, let’s start at the most basic level. I hear all the time from small business owners, “I don’t get Twitter. Why would I want to use that for my business?” Here’s the bottom line:

“Twitter is a tool that allows you to post short messages of 140 characters or less, called ‘Tweets.’ The question becomes, ‘How is that useful and why do I care?’ And really, I think the function that makes Twitter exceptionally useful is the search.”
-Seth Resler

The Basics:

Twitter lets you search through actual conversations in real time. Seth Resler, Founder of New England Social Media describes it “as if everybody spoke with a cartoon word bubble, and you could actually take those cartoon word bubbles and sort through them.” Knowing what people are saying about your business (or industry) is exceptionally valuable: you can use that information for prospecting and/or for customer service.

Once you’re on Twitter you realize that it completely bypasses the typical negative customer service experience of calling an 800 number, getting a phone tree, waiting a while and not really getting the issue resolved…you know the deal. There’s no transparency involved there. But with Twitter, your comment or question is part of the public domain. This means that as a company owner using Twitter, you are voluntarily becoming more accountable for solving your customer’s issue. My experience is that the companies who are identifying with and embracing Twitter are the ones who really do want to have meaningful relationships with their customers and not just make a quick sale.

Good relationships require listening, so even though Twitter is a tool that you can use to talk, you should really use it to listen first, to find out what people are saying about you. You don’t want to approach Twitter thinking, “I’m going to Tweet my product information or my sale information or that kind of stuff.” Instead, think, “what do my customers or prospects care about?”

What to Say:

Here’s a main difference between traditional media and social media: traditional media outlets like radio, tv and magazines are all about frequency…hitting your message over and over until you reach everybody. That’s something you definitely don’t want to do with Twitter because it’s really obnoxious and people will just ignore you. So business owners often ask, “What kind of things should I be tweeting about?”

Well, if you want people to listen to you, you want to talk about the things that they care about. Maybe that’s your product, but it may also be things that are related to your product. Here is an example:

Say that your business is a clothing line, and you know that your followers are into fashion. They may be interested in your 20% off sale, but if it’s all you ever post they’re not really going to be engaged. You also want to talk to them about fashion in general since that’s something they are clearly interested in. Sometimes that’s passing along great articles that you’ve read on fashion, and often it’s repeating information from other people, like, “Hey everybody, don’t forget about the premier episode of ‘Fashion Runway’ on E-television tonight at 9pm EST.”

What not to say?

Some companies wrestle with the overlap between business and personal topics. On one hand, we want to speak with a voice that’s authentic and personal. On the other hand, we always want to be professional. If you are a solo entrepreneur this is a bit easier to figure out, but if your company has multiple employees and/or other people who are Tweeting on behalf of your company then you need to make sure they are speaking in the right voice.

My advice is this: If you’re new to Twitter or any other form of social media go ahead and start. Just be sure that you don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want everybody in the world to know.

How to get started:

Twitter’s service is great, but the actual Twitter.com website isn’t all that useful because it presents you with a massive stream of information and few ways to sort the data. However, Twitter is open source (meaning that they give away their code so lots of program developers take that code and build tools that interact with it) so there are a lot of great (Free!) tools out there that make it easier for you to use the Twitter stream. These include things like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, CoTweet and HootSuite. If you build up hundreds or thousands of followers and want to segment their information then check out those tools.

Here are the steps to get going:

1. First go to Twitter.com and register for an account.
2. Then set up your preferences, including a bio picture or logo and a unique background (make one for free at twitbacks).
3. Choose one of the management tools we mentioned above, and you’ll be up and running.

Keep it going:

Here’s the part when you get to decide how much time to spend on Twitter. The thing to remember about social media is that it’s not expensive, but it can be time consuming because you are networking with people. Tools like Twitter facilitate relationships, but they don’t replace relationships. Having said that, automation will make your life easier. Just keep in mind that you always want to have these things come back to a human relationship with your customers and you never want to let automation become a substitute for that.

If you would like to schedule Tweets ahead of time, check out Cotweet.com and Social Oomph. These let you pre-schedule tweets to go out later in your day or later in the week. That way you can manage your time better, plus you won’t have to send out all of your tweets at one time then nothing else for the rest of the day.

Do you have additional questions about using Twitter for Business? Drop me a line or contact Seth at New England Social Media. Then get ready to turn things up another notch, as our next post introduces you to YouTube and Video!