Reach Members in 140 Characters

CU360
June 16, 2010 | COMMENTS

Many businesses are struggling to make sense of Twitter, but even if it strikes you as puzzling or over-hyped, consider this: many of your members are already there.

Twitter has more than 100 million users and is becoming a free forum for business, reports The New York Times. Companies are using Twitter to engage in highly personalized interactions — sometimes right to the phones in our pockets. Twitter recently introduced a limited program of “promoted tweets” that will display ads in some search results, and Twitter plans eventually to offer advertising more broadly.

In the meantime, small businesses are advised to make productive use of the service:

First, listen. What are people saying about your credit union? Unlike conversations by phone or e-mail, Twitter conversations usually are not private, and listening is fair game.

Many firms are now building sophisticated listening posts, using third-party applications to track mentions of their brand names. Automated alerts for dozens of keywords for products and competitors allow companies to follow up on thousands of Twitter postings each week. Clients may have technical issues, to which firms can respond rapidly. Tracking also provides sales leads and opportunities to beat competitors.

Don't be boring. Consider the example of a 14-seat ice cream shop in San Francisco that has gathered nearly 300,000 Twitter followers — far more than its giant competitors. Not bad for a small business that began posting on Twitter only last year.

The company started using Twitter because, in the words of the operations manager, “we have zero money for any kind of advertising or promotion.” To keep customers up to date on new flavors, the shop decided to make its account edgy and entertaining, with a Twitter bio of “ice cream with attitude.”

Create a live FAQ. Some companies use Twitter as a customer service desk. Whole Foods, one of the largest retailers on Twitter with 1.7 million followers, estimates that customer questions generate three-quarters of its Twitter traffic.

To Whole Foods, Twitter is a live version of the “frequently asked questions” page. The theory is that if one person has a question, others will as well. One sign of a company that engages with followers is a page filled with @ symbols—Twitter shorthand for a reply to a specific person.

Start a focus group. Twitter can be your portable focus group — one you don't have to pay for. Take, for example, the owner of a small Los Angeles bakery named Kiss My Bundt, who experiments with new recipes and uses Twitter for customer feedback.

“It absolutely is like a focus group, except the beauty of it is I don't have to go and find people who are interested or knowledgeable about baking,” says Chrysta Wilson. “My universe is already there — my Twitter followers and Facebook fans.”

Her 1,900 followers have helped her perfect recipes and establish favorites. “It's great for getting input,” Wilson adds. “It's a way to break out of the business owner's bubble and get an outsider's perspective.”

Make it part of marketing. Mari Smith, a social media speaker and trainer who lives by the rule “always be marketing” and has amassed more than 68,000 followers, will not post a traditional “push” marketing message that explicitly advertises an event like a webinar. Instead, she'll post something that arouses people's curiosity and include a link.

Twitter is a way to maintain a personal touch — and scale it up, says Smith. “Whether I'm chitchatting, retweeting, @replying, talking about my personal life, my products or services, it's all marketing,” she notes. “People buy people before they buy products or service. They're buying into you.”

The payoff: Smith says half her business came through Twitter.

Start small. La Boulange, a French cafe and bakery with 11 locations in the San Francisco area, has fun with Twitter posts, like a Twitter trivia bingo contest or daily posts of New Year's resolutions like “eat more chocolate.” La Boulange has about 1,000 followers, but for a local business, even a few hundred loyal followers can be extremely valuable.

Twitter makes it possible for small business to retain a personal touch. “It's not so much about the number of followers,” says Emily Doan, La Boulange chief of operations and principal Twitterer. “It's about making that connection and relationship to people. It's keeping our company fresh in their minds each day.”

This article was orginally published online by CU360, an online portal for benchmarking tools, market insights, industry data, and analytical information at cu360.cuna.org. Reprinted with permission.