Twitter for Your Boss

If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to feature on Twitter, then this article is for you. It’s designed to help you sell your boss on Twitter, and also offers ideas on how to gain followers ethically in a professional context.

The Basics: Why Twitter?

Twitter runs on everything: not just on the web but mobile phones through apps and SMS, smartphones like iPhone and Blackberry. It’s so simple and easy to use that it seems to crop up everywhere.

It can be used to keep in touch with your customers:

• Keep customers informed about new ideas
• Get feedback on features for a product
• Run competitions and surveys

Your boss says: What if people give negative feedback?

Answer: People will say negative things about your company on Twitter whether you’re there or not. If you can engage customers rather than bury their feedback you can make better products.

Popularity

Twitter excels at fostering public discussions. Your company or service can have an account, and there will be existing customers there already. You’ll even attract new customers through Twitter.

Your boss says: Where’s the proof? Isn’t this just a new social network trend?

Answer: The top 3 Twitter users have around 200,000 followers. That’s 200,000 people who see their messages every time they post. Find more stats on TweetCounter and Tweetrush.

Twitter has also recently been featured newspapers, drawing many new users to the service: The Guardian, The Sun, Daily Mail, BBC

Branding

Twitter provides simple editing tools to customise your profile. Change your icon, background image and colour scheme to reflect your brand.

Boss-Friendly Examples: These big brands are successfully using Twitter: Dell, StarBucks, NYTimes.

Business Usage Strategy

Determine your metrics for success: are you using Twitter to gain followers and attract new customers or do you want to collect feedback and engage with existing customers? Most business will want a mix of both these things.

If you’re recommending Twitter to a business rather than your boss, don’t assume they’ll understand how to get the most out of Twitter. I’ve noticed a lot of businesses on Twitter miss @replies: check @replies religiously.

Content

Create a content plan. This can just be a list of things your customers would like to read on Twitter. Most businesses get stuck at this point, but it’s really easy: any business will generate a lot of content customers are genuinely interested in.

Customise this list for your situation:

• News on updates to a product
• Links to your blog posts
• Related news that isn’t quite blog-worthy
• Product tips
• Coupon codes and money saving offers
• Additional customer support
• Competitions
• Surveys
• Related links for products that can be used with your service

Good Etiquette

Don’t add followers to attract new followers. It’s quickly becoming the new type of social network spam that users really dislike. There are cases when a person will be genuinely thankful that you followed them because your product is just what they needed, but consider talking to them first using @username.

Promptly reply to @replies.

Posting about special offers and codes will be welcomed by your fans, but don’t post these too often. Space content with genuinely useful updates.

Redirect customers to traditional support systems (phone, email, forums) if a conversation might swamp your feed.

Building Up Followers

Reply to people who have talked about your product or service. Find them using search.twitter.com. They might follow you back once they realise you’re on Twitter.

Promote Twitter on your site and blogs. Twitter’s got badges and widgets.

If you’re a small business, consider asking people politely to retweet killer content. Dan Zarrella wrote about this and other techniques for going viral on Twitter.

Follower count != success. My company currently has 96 followers, but that’s 96 people who are genuinely interested in our products, which means more than us blindly following people to try and get the numbers up. 96 people listening is better than 1000 people ignoring you.

Summary

• Determine what you want to get out of Twitter
• Create a content plan: this can just be a simple list of things your customers would like to read through Twitter
• Spend some time on the branding
• Check @replies religiously to engage with customers
• Search for customers talking about your products on search.twitter.com and talk to them with @replies
• Practice good etiquette