A Special Guest Post by Mack Collier
Let’s be honest; Twitter seems goofy as hell when you first start using it. The general premise is that you will share what you’re doing RIGHT now with complete strangers. As if they care, right?
I thought this same thing for 6 months before I *finally* started to ‘get’ the value of Twitter in late 2007. Over the last three and a half years of using Twitter, I’ve seen some smart applications by marketers. If you’re not sure what the big deal is with Twitter, here are 4 ideas for how you can use Twitter to better connect with your customers, and grow your business.
(1) Twitter as a Networking Tool.
This is probably where Twitter really excels. If you think about it, the basic functionality of Twitter is very similar to texting. But instead of texting just one person, you can send out short messages that can be seen by dozens or even hundreds or thousands of people at once. That gives you the ability to connect directly with people, and can help you expand and boost awareness for your company, or even yourself!
And here I have to mention the value of Twitter chats. I’ve been participating in Twitter chats since Jan of 2009, and I can tell you that these are a fabulous way to expand your network, and meet like-minded individuals. There are now well over 100 regularly-scheduled Twitter chats, and you can see them all here.
(2) Twitter as a feedback channel.
Did you just relaunch your website? Did your new ad go live on your site? Or did you just walk off the stage after presenting at a major industry event? In each case, you can go to Twitter and get real-time reactions. I do this every time I speak at an event; I search on Twitter to see what attendees think of the event itself, and the topics being covered. I can see what attendees like and what they dislike. That information helps me better customize my session so I hit on the points that attendees have identified as being valuable to them.
Give Search at Twitter a spin, no telling what you might find!
(3) Twitter as a customer-acquisition/service channel.
I was talking to an attendee at an event last year, and she mentioned that her company sold printers, and they were curious about Twitter. I asked her if they had ever searched Twitter for company mentions. She said they had not, so we went to the above link for Twitter search, and found that recently a customer had expressed a problem with one of her company’s printers.
THEN a competitor had quickly responded and offered to contact the customer about THEIR printers, and the customer said she’d love that. An opportunity lost because the company wasn’t monitoring what their customers were saying about them on Twitter.
Or if you’re a local business, here’s another great tool for you, Monitter.com. What I love about Monitter is that it not only let’s you search Twitter, but you can also search based on LOCATION.
For example, if you own a pizzeria in downtown Nashville, you can search Twitter for tweets within a 10 mile radius of your zip code that contain the terms ‘lunch’ and ‘pizza’. Then you’ll be able to see everyone that’s on Twitter within 10 miles of you that’s tweeting about how they are interested in pizza for lunch. You can reach out to them directly and let them know about your lunch specials!
(4) Twitter as a crisis-communication channel.
What if your website suddenly goes down, or a major recall is announced? Or maybe some of your customers are upset about a new ad that just started running over the weekend? In each case, your customers could be on Twitter talking about you, and if you are able to jump in and connect with them quickly, you can put out potential PR fires before they start. An appropriate and timely response on Twitter also helps grow goodwill with your customers.
There are plenty of other smart ways that marketers can leverage Twitter as a tool to grow their businesses and connect with customers.
What are some examples of ways YOUR company is using Twitter to connect with its customers? What did I miss?
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Photo is Twitter wallpaper by JoshSemans.