How to Harness the Power of Twitter for your Business

Online, April 14, 2010 (Newswire.com) - In today's world businesses cannot afford to have a poor social media presence online. Specifically on Twitter, which influences the virtual and business landscapes more than any other website out there right now. The statistics are hard to ignore. According to Mashable, in 2008, Twitter had about 6 million users. Mashable projects by year-end 2009, 18 million people will be using Twitter - per month. Mashable also projects there will be more than 26 million active Twitter users for 2010 (again, per month).

In 2009 Dell showed us a great instance of harnessing the power of Twitter. In December Dell announced that its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software. The number of users signing up to get Dell's tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell's online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets -- Twitter's 140-character messages -- over 35 different channels. Dell, the third-largest maker of PCs, started using Twitter two years ago to reach new customers. The $6.5 million represents the total amount generated through direct customer interactions on Twitter over that time. While those sales are a fraction of Dell's $61.1 billion in annual revenue last year, the company sees Twitter as one of its most significant ways of interacting with customers.

There are many ways to use Twitter to market your business, but in this article I will highlight the 4 that I believe are the most powerful. These are direct, indirect, monitoring and in-house. Please read below for more information:

1) Direct: This is the most obvious way to reach potential customers. Use Twitter as a marketing/public relations channel and a direct link to corporate blogs. Post about corporate products, services, accomplishments, etc. and link back to corporate web pages, press releases and other promotional sites. This method may to be the easiest way, but companies should be aware that using Twitter like this could actually hinder their image on Twitter. Self-promotional tweets can be damaging to company image and reputation.
2) Indirect: The second method is to let your employees tweet for the company. As the employees use Twitter to enhance their own personal reputations, the company's reputation is also enhanced. A good example to demonstrate the power of the indirect method is in reverse: imagine what negative tweets about the company would look like. Tweets can affect the company negatively, undersyet the reverse is also true. Employees tweeting with excitement about their work, developments in their industry, new products, or other interesting topics( even if unrelated to the company) can promote positive outlooks for whichever company they represent.

3) Monitoring: Sometimes it is better to be Twitter listeners than Twitter participants. Using tools like Google Alerts or desktop applications like TweetDeck are easy ways to keep track of when the company is being mentioned, its product names and even the industry as a whole. Companies that are smart are paying attention to stay ahead of the game on potential problems and to collect feedback on products, issues and new ideas.

4) In-house: This can be extremely effective, yet it is pretty risky. Some companies use Twitter internally to share ideas or communicate about current projects. However, if this information is confidential, employees either need to protect their updates by making them only readable by fellow employees. However, there is no guarantee of security with this information.

In summary, if your company is thinking about jumping into the world of Twitter (and you should be) do not do it blindly. You should figure out what the best strategy for your business is and have a game plan going in. Twitter is an extremely powerful tool, but to get positive results you need to utilize is the best way possible.