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How can we use Twitter for business?

Written on 23rd April 2008 12 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

During the “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia” Web 2.0 Expo session, attendees were able to ask questions by sending a Twitter message to @micromedia2. As you can imagine, updates like “the man next to me smells a bit” and “Thank god Scoble isn’t in the room..” appeared on the two screens. Yet some folks of the audience managed to influence the topics Gregarious Narain (Blue Whale Labs), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research), Stowe Boyd and Brian Solis discussed. They asked for some business insights, and they got it. So gentlemen, how CAN we use Twitter for business?

Brian Solis praised Dell. The computer company follows the Twitter conversations by using Tweetscan and reacts when (potential) customers ask questions or complain about the Dell products. Forrester research does the same thing. “We listen to what people are saying and usually engage in the conversation when we notice one. Other companies like Jetblue, Marketingprofs, Zappos and Comcast do the same thing”, Owyang said. “That’s the immediate benefit”, Boyd said, “Yet the big picture here is that streaming services like Twitter are potentially very big for enterprises. People can follow projects or other companies by having things streamed to them. They don’t have to look it up anymore”.

But what if companies don’t keep an eye on Twittter, like the majority does now. What will they loose? Solis: “The conversations will take place anyway. With or without you. And hopefully, the Twitter conversations might become even more more substantial. When you ignore questions then, especially the one full of hate, you leave the answers to other people.”

Stowe Boyd pitched a pitch concept of his own: TwitPitch. The amount of emails from start-ups who wanted his attention drove Boyd mad, so he came up with a short ‘n’ sweet Twitter format. Now start-ups can pitch to Boyd with one update. That saves him time, and he actually noticed some good ones which he then retweets. “It’s very interesting, the whole pitching process is now in the open discourse. Followers are getting to see the pitches, it’s more of a performance now. We took pitching out of the smoky black room that is email”.

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About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

12 comments/trackbacks to “How can we use Twitter for business?”

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By Maarten on Apr 23, 2008

Twitter is the king of the internet at the moment, even though they have been suffering from downtime way more then any other webservice.
I’ve been using Twitter heavily since the last TheNextWeb conference and really got addicted.

With Tweetscan, companies can easily monitor any communication on their brand. It doesn’t require that much time or money so there is no reason why any company would not use it. Problem is that most companies don’t think Twitter is important, I work for a market research company and I’m amazed by the negative attitude towards Twitter…

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By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Apr 24, 2008

@Maarten, I agree with you, do I’m not really amazed. Most people can’t grasp the attitude of wanting to share what your doing. They consider it be narcissistic and geeky. Well, maybe there right. But fact is that there are tons of conversations going on that would normally had never taken place or stayed in dark smoky rooms. Now it’s out in the open, and they should profit from that.

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By Doron Vermaat on Apr 24, 2008

The king of the internet? That’s hilarious :) Twitter is mostly used by marketeers, bloggers and geeks. The girl that is working in your favorite bar, your brother or sisters, your office manager, your old class mates etc,.. can they be found on twitter? I don’t think so. You do find them on FB or Myspace.

The reason that a company like Dell is monitoring Twitter is because they now that most people on Twitter are content creators like bloggers or decision makers like business owners and marketeers. That’s why damage control on Twitter is way more effective than on any other social network.

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By Maarten on Apr 24, 2008

I see your point, but I wouldn’t call Facebook and Myspace the king of the internet. That title for me is for the platform where the buzz is, and since most of the content creators / early adopters are on Twitter, I think companies should start realizing Twitter is very important for their brand.

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By Hans de Kraker on Apr 24, 2008

I love Twitter because it gives me access to undercurrent – rather then mainstream. It is a great listening tool and if you use the track feature and hook it into Google talk, all the tweets get stored in your inbox and are searchable.

The King of the Internet is a big word, and the use it very limited still – although I can see my 76 year old mom usjing it soon via her mobile because it is so easy to use.

Crush of the internet for sure – now it is a matter of finding out how long lasting this love will be and how it matures.

King of the Internet is still Google,

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By Luigi Cappel on Apr 25, 2008

Many companies haven’t figured it out yet and many even ban staff from using social networking, others are experimenting and learning and will be much the wiser and profitable for it.

I went to an ICT cluster event last night talking about the success of New Zealand businesses on a world scale and surprise surprise, the common denominator of international success was networking, people doing business with people. Then we looked at the companies where the founder was big on networking and built a huge successful business, then passed the business on to graduates who had all the models and didn’t believe in the networks and business went down fast, blamed undoubtedly on the economy.

Twitter me @BluesBro

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By Dr. Wright on Apr 27, 2008

I dig twitter because I can access people and learn a lot. Yes, everything everyone does is not totally interesting but
I have learned so much and you can always unfollow the boring

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By Rocque on Aug 10, 2008

I just started using Twitter because more and more of my contacts are using it. I feel pretty new to it and do not have many outside contacts. Plus I am one of the few who do not have texting on their cell phone because of the distractions. However, now that I think about it, having a Twitter enabled phone does sound like a great option to get for work though since our emails are monitored. We could start the underground Twitter club at work and simply keep each other motivated and happy and say that person in room 5 has green stuff in their teeth without worrying about getting written up or fired.

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