Twitter’s for geeks and kids, right?

Yes it is.  But it’s broader than that.  See this exam­ple of 16 major brands that use Twit­ter effec­tively.  Some of the brands listed include Dell, Star­bucks and Ford.  If you’re still not con­vinced, you may be miss­ing a mas­sive oppor­tu­nity.  Twit­ter does some­thing very cheaply, some­thing that used to be very expen­sive.  It allows — no it requires your busi­ness to engage with cus­tomers on a per­sonal level.

Per­sonal engage­ment is some­thing the mar­ket is crav­ing, and the key play­ers are mak­ing the most of it.  They have under­stood that cor­po­rate based brand­ing and adver­tis­ing only gets you so far with today’s media savvy con­sumer.  Peo­ple have been beaten to a pulp with adver­tis­ing for 30+ years, and they’re under­stand­ably cyn­i­cal.  If you can make them feel spe­cial, like they know you and you know them, they’ll trust you more.

1.  Done right, Twit­ter builds trust.

Twit­ter allows a 2 way con­ver­sa­tion between peo­ple.  Essen­tially it’s one-on-one, with the abil­ity to broad­cast and eaves­drop on con­ver­sa­tions at the same time.  The more one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions you can have as a per­son rep­re­sent­ing a brand (rather than as the brand itself  - a dehu­man­ised, face­less entity at best!), the more trust you will gar­ner.  Be will­ing to engage hon­estly in both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive con­ver­sa­tions about your com­pany and your prod­ucts.  This makes you real and acces­si­ble, fur­ther build­ing trust, which builds ongo­ing rela­tion­ships, which builds repeat busi­ness, which com­bined with great ser­vice can build fiercely loyal cus­tomers.  Not every­body will like you or be happy — but we need to stop pre­tend­ing that’s pos­si­ble or desir­able any­way! The per­sonal part and the hon­esty part are both crit­i­cal!  If you don’t nail that, it will bite you and you won’t see the value.  Use Twit­ter, but make sure you do it right.

2.  Done right, Twit­ter builds a loyal fan-base

There are thou­sands of Twit­ter users who have thou­sands of fol­low­ers.  There are dozens now who have mil­lions of fol­low­ers!  But raw num­bers aren’t enough.  Twit­ter has a noto­ri­ously low con­ver­sion rate to sales.  There are many ways to build a large fol­low­ing quickly and eas­ily, but only one-on-one, selected fol­low­ing and refer­ral will get you a fol­low­ing com­prised of peo­ple who might become cus­tomers.  You have to do the hard yards.  Twit­ter can build a huge audi­ence, but you’d bet­ter make sure they are the right peo­ple who are, or will become, loyal fans.

3.  Done right, Twit­ter cre­ates viral mar­ket­ing potential

If you’ve built trust by respond­ing to cus­tomers on Twit­ter as a real per­son, and you have built a size­able fol­low­ing of qual­ity con­tacts, it might just hap­pen.  But in the words of the Boss “You can’t start a fire with­out a spark”, so it won’t hap­pen if you don’t have some­thing that cre­ates enough excite­ment with indi­vid­u­als. Twit­ter cre­ates viral mar­ket­ing poten­tial, but you need a qual­ity fol­low­ing and a great spark.

4. Done right, Twit­ter helps you man­age prob­lems at their source

By track­ing Twit­ter chat­ter about your prod­ucts, ser­vice and indus­try, you can react faster and more sur­gi­cally to prob­lems.  If some­one has an issue with your prod­uct, you can poten­tially solve that prob­lem, quickly and per­son­ally — and the whole world can see you do it, cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive buzz from a neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion that may have oth­er­wise exploded. Twit­ter can turn you into the go-to-guy of your indus­try, and could help you snatch vic­tory from the jaws of defeat.

Twitter’s not just for geeks and teenagers!  If you know of other ways Twit­ter can be done right to solve real busi­ness prob­lems, please leave a comment.

Related Posts:

• 10 Hot Tips for Mak­ing Money Online
• The secret to a suc­cess­ful web business
• Busi­ness Secret Spices 1: Obsession
• Why you need to be a pur­ple cow
• Tech­nol­ogy isn’t the answer