This week’s entry will be about Twitter and using it for business purposes. Consider this question – is it necessary to follow your clients on Twitter? Does it depend on your job function and/or the industry you are in?
It is my opinion that you should follow your clients on Twitter if your job function requires any sort of client interaction regardless of your industry. Social media is all about engagement with an audience (for Twitter, your followers) so why wouldn’t you? If you are employed by or own a small/mid-size business this kind of active engagement with your clients/prospects/follower
s can level the playing field somewhat against your competitors that only tweet about specials, sales, deals, etc. No doubt about it – this is a smart application of Twitter. However, these Twitter users often forget to engage their customers in one-to-one conversations. As a result they often come across as self-serving and narcissistic. Not exactly the way you want clients/prospects to view your business, no?
A few examples of big companies that use Twitter effectively:
1.) Starbucks, which has over 281,000 followers does a very nice job of engaging with its customers. Follow Starbucks here: http://twitter.com/StarBuc ks
2.) Comcast uses Twitter as a customer service tool (it could be argued that the success of Comcast on twitter is an excellent PR application as well). IF they can do it with their large number of followers, so can the small businessperson. Here are Two interesting articles about Frank Eliason, the Comcast “Twitter Man”:
http://bit.ly/t57Z7
http://bit.ly/3okWPP
Follow Comcast here: http://twitter.com/COmcastcares
Both Starbucks and Comcast provide excellent reference points for best practices of Twitter.
Back to the question I posed above. If you are in a marketing-related field, particularly SEO, SEM or web development/design, you better follow your clients/prospects. The insight gained in reading a client/prospect’s Twitter stream should give you an idea of what is important to them. This should help, along with a face-to-face discussion about their business, in determining ways to develop an SEO strategy, website look and feel, website content, etc. Additionally, it is very hard to have any credibility selling web marketing services if you aren’t using best practices yourself and this starts with how you manage your Twitter account. What would you have to point to as an example besides what someone else is doing? For salespeople, it can be an effective prospecting tool – following clients/prospects can yield information on what is going on with them. Savvy salespeople will be able to analyze this information to see if there is a sales opportunity.
Social media is by no means the be-all end-all of marketing. It is only part of the marketing mix. However, social media continues to evolve into an important marketing and sales function that should not be ignored.
Here are a few articles on how to get started using Twitter for business:
17 ways you can use Twitter – http://bit.ly/1KyebD
7 business applications for Twitter (cool slideshow!) – http://bit.ly/im8Kn
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – http://bit.ly/C6YHg
What are your thoughts?
An article on ADWEEK has illustrated very surprising results from a new survey differentiating social media sites that agencies use to reach their clients.
