What Do You Really Know about Twitter?

Mark Crawford
February 8, 2010 | COMMENTS

Many of us are unconvinced about the business value of Twitter, or haven't taken the time to understand how it can be used creatively to find new business and improve/retain customer loyalty—two abilities that are absolutely essential for maintaining a competitive edge in this brutal economy. If you think Twitter is a passing fad, or just a site for young people to send trivial messages, check out the stories below to see how business professionals in Madison, Wisconsin, have embraced Twitter to improve their organization's brand strength and performance.

Jennifer Smith, Director of Communications and Marketing, Thrive

Why Twitter: I brought Thrive onto Twitter to test the platform and see what it was about. I liked the idea of a micro-blogging tool to cross-promote the work we're doing.

How It Helps Me Do My Job: Twitter helps us find valuable resources and contacts, connect with local residents and businesses and reach out to folks outside our region. I can find other groups on Twitter who are working on the same types of projects. I have also used it to follow industry conferences—for example, I couldn't attend the IEDC economic development conference in Las Vegas this year but followed the tweet updates using hashtags.

Twitter also builds traffic to our website by maximizing our SEO (search engine optimization). Last week I tested our ranking using various key terms. The search term “Thrive Madison” resulted in our content showing up in the first nine of ten links on page one, Google. Much of this ranking is due to online placement and promotion, and recirculation of content, via Twitter and other social media tools.

Most Creative Way I Use It: I use HootSuite's “Send Later” function to promote facts about the region or upcoming events. When Thrive sponsored the 2009 Mid-America Healthcare Ventures Forum, I used this function to pre-program a description and link to each business in the region presenting at the conference. This allowed me to work ahead of time to promote 20 regional businesses throughout the day/night.

Biggest Surprise: The strong positive reaction we've had to our presence on Twitter. As a startup in 2007-2008 most of our outreach was to our investors and project partners. Now that we're becoming a second-stage business, I'm finding that with social media tools like Twitter there's a much broader—and more diverse—audience for our work.

Key Advice: Changes happen quickly in the online sphere—tools are becoming more refined literally daily, making it easier to wrangle and track information and data; this also means you have to work harder to keep up and constantly adjust your approach to utilize the most effective tools for the most efficient use of your time.

Andy Wallman, President, Knupp & Watson

Why Twitter: Twitter is one of the most remarkable forms of communication ever. It's an amazing learning tool for our staff because of its ability to organize content. I can make lists by category of those we follow, and those who follow us; so rather than doing a Google search, I can instantly search within Twitter for the prequalified experts that I trust.

How It Helps Me Do My Job: I learn via Twitter every day. I get inspired by people's contributions and try to inspire others in my own way. We use networks like Twitter to share insights and inspiration with our clients, and the world. I'm learning a ton about how social media works, design trends around the world, and new web-based communications. It's also got us writing every day and helps us be concise.

Most Creative Way I Use It: I created a website to sell T-shirts as a way to experiment with Twitter as a sales tool, and to teach my kids about business. The T-shirt experiment is ongoing (we are not yet an international sensation). A funny story though: I tweeted my followers that the first five people to retweet the website would get a free T-shirt. The first person to respond was in Australia .

Biggest Surprise: Twitter is increasing the speed at which we work. It forces us to be fast. It makes me wonder if this relentless parade of communications contact will make us not just faster, but also better communicators.

Key Advice: It'll take you awhile to really absorb the nuances Twitter offers. Prepare to dedicate yourself. If you are to be a valued contributor, you have to work it like no other communications vehicle you've ever touched. To that extent, it requires a large brain shift. The more you participate, the more you will be amazed by its potential.

Joe Gothard, Principal, La Follette High School

Why Twitter: As a school leader I need to model behaviors that are meaningful to our students and the community. Twitter is the perfect social networking site because it is so quick and easy to use and manage. It also provides a bit more privacy than other sites.

How It Helps Me Do My Job: The traditional way principals communicate is “the memo.” Memos are time-consuming and expensive to draft, copy and distribute. E-mail is effective but, if the recipient receives 150-200 e-mails a day like I do, my message may become lost or just part of that person's in-box .  Twitter allows me to give succinct updates, which fits my daily routine much better than writing memos. I also follow pages with education-related topics that are of interest to me and each night I have 100-200 tweets to sift through and review. I have stumbled across some highly innovative and effective school leadership practices that I might never have found without Twitter.  

The Most Creative Way I Use It: I have a "Google alert" set for La Follette High School. I have been able to quickly post articles referring to La Follette that might take days or weeks to find otherwise. I also love to post videos. One of my concerns is that some YouTube videos include open comments that are often critical, judgmental and inappropriate for me to post. I have learned a method of embedding the video into a separate application so I can post it without the comments.

Biggest Surprise: I have personally exchanged messages with the mayor of Newark,New Jersey who has nearly 1,000,000 followers. He is an amazing leader.

Key Advice: Twitter provides the ability to "dissect" the Internet and filter information that is meaningful, which saves time and provides a great deal of focus on specific areas of interest. It has definitely changed my life. 

Wendy Soucie, Owner, Wendy Soucie Consulting

Why Twitter: As a social media strategist, I need to understand different types of social media. I joined first to have the experience, to understand how to set it up and use it. I then looked at how Twitter could help me achieve my business goals—online reputation growth, leader in social media space, trainer on social media tools and blogger.

How It Helps Me Do My Job: Twitter helps me promote my blog more than anything else. At conferences I can share key points with people who follow me and meet other attendees who tweet as well. Since I am often out of the office I am challenged to find time to be effective with a Twitter conversation. Using a product like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite helps me track the conversations in which I am mentioned.

Most Creative Way I Use It: I like using it at conferences to meet others who are there after they have posted creative comments. It's a new way to network at an event. I like to make a weekly summary of all my tweets.  Since I only tweet 2-3 days a week, the tweets add up to a reasonable post length for my blog. 

Biggest Surprise: With Twitter and Tweetdeck I catch many bits and pieces of conversations. It's like having a puzzle with all the corners and edges in place but key pieces in the middle missing. I can get almost the whole picture but not quite. It's not worthwhile enough to look for the missing pieces, though—just go with the feel of what you think it is.

Key Advice: Always link your tweets to a website or blog where readers can get more information about you and your company—a 160-character bio is not enough for anyone to judge you, but they will if nothing else is available.

Troy Janisch, Digital Marketing Manager, American Family

 Why Twitter: Twitter improves our ability to reach customers in a whole new way by joining public conversations about insurance. If someone is having trouble with insurance, whether it's an American Family customer or not, we have the ability to help out. In the end, providing help to anyone with a question related to insurance is good for business.  

How It Helps Me Do My Job: Twitter is an expressive medium. When people have an extraordinary customer experience, good or bad, Twitter is where they'll usually talk about it first. This gives us an opportunity to learn about customer experiences sooner.

The Most Creative Way I Use It: We monitor brand-related conversations on Twitter using Twitter's real-time keyword search capability. We set up “Saved Searches” for brand-related and industry-related keywords. Tools like HootSuite make it easy to monitor several ongoing Twitter searches from one location from their website or using their iPhone application. I also save Twitter searches as RSS feeds in Outlook, so posts arrive like e-mail, which makes them easy to track, archive and manage.  

Biggest Surprise: People are pleased and surprised when a company contacts them to learn more about their customer experience. Twitter users like to be heard. They also appreciate the helpful tips, advice and news that businesses provide.

Key Advice: People appreciate good content. Help them learn something, do something or gain something of value and you will succeed.

Marivic Valencia,Owner, ValenciaPR

Why Twitter: Twitter is an increasingly popular social media tool. Twitter isn't exactly intuitive, so I feel I'm reaching a different audience via Twitter—those people who are working to understand and use it properly (trying new and different things). This type of audience is a good fit for my business.

How It Helps Me Do My Job: Twitter keeps me on top of industry news that is PR-specific or specific to my clients (music industry, tech, start-up, nonprofit). I can set up alerts for trending topics and be well-versed on a story/topic from when it starts and as it plays out. For example, I can copy/paste the subject I am searching, including hashtag (for example, "#michaeljackson”) into search.twitter.com,then click on "create RSS feed" of results. For a client that offers location-based-services, I recently searched "bars in DC" and marked the users (people on Twitter) who are looking for bars in DC. I let my client know who these users are and his salespeople follow them on Twitter.

Most Creative Way I Use It: I start a conversation on Twitter, which updates my Facebook. Because I have different "friends" on each site, different people respond on each platform and I get multiple perspectives from a single post.

Biggest Surprise: I'm still talking to the same people I was a year ago—maybe not every day, but even as Twitter has grown I'm still having quality exchanges with my core group. 

Key Advice: Learn how retweets work. Find the right Twitter client for your needs (Tweetdeck, HootSuite, etc.). Don't get caught up in tracking click-throughs on URLs. Don't get caught up in follower/following numbers. Really understand how the platform works and seek guidance if you need it.

Originally published in the Capital Region Business Journal. Reprinted with permission.