We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer.

Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. Further, you might have some really great ideas to add. That’s why we have lively conversations here at [chrisbrogan.com] in the comments section. Jump right in!

Oh, and please feel free to reblog this wherever. Just be kind and link back to the original article.

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

1. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
2. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
3. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
4. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
5. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
6. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
7. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
8. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
9. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
10. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

1. You don’t have to read every tweet.
2. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
3. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
4. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
5. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
6. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
7. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
8. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
9. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
10. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

1. Twitter takes up time.
2. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
3. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
4. There are other ways to do this.
5. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
6. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
7. Twitter is just for technonerds.
8. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
9. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
10. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

1. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
2. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
3. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
4. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
5. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
6. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
7. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
8. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
9. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
10. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

What else would you add? How are you using Twitter for your business?

By the way, Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on this, too.

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

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Very interesting results blogged by Mukund Mohan about blog search relevance. He did a search in several notable blog search tools for “chris brogan” minus the quotes, and found less-than-stellar results. In the comments, you’ll see that I incorrectly recreated his search and did a little better, but it was still interesting to note.

Further, I feel that Google search, regular google versus their blog search, has really stepped up lately. I’ve been using that to find old posts when someone asks me for information. Yahoo and Ask aren’t so bad either.

So this is a shift from what I often advise people, with regards to finding relevant blogs. Should I be recommending straight up Google instead of the search tools? I’m starting to think so.

What’s your take?

photo credit, reedbiotch

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When looking at content marketing projects like Digital Nomads, if you get there early, it’s going to look like a bunch of posts by people at Dell. But that’s okay. It’s Dell’s project, and they hope that it grows into something that others will find valuable and build around. They’re planting seeds.

All content projects grow that way. The people who create the project (or those who eventually own the project) must start somewhere with putting something there. Otherwise, it looks horribly empty and barren. If you visit a farm, you don’t want to see a big stretch of brown soil. You want to see lush patches of greenery, promising the harvest that will come next. The same is true of a platform built for content and conversations.

When starting Project Dogfood, I set up several conversation threads, and started the first questions in all of them. I wrote three different topics for each thread, with the hope that people would join up, get involved, and have a conversation. And it worked.

Right now, the project is still heavily tended and seeded by me as community manager. But over time, some of those seeds will take root, will grow, and will become whole, rich crops of delicious information for us to tend, harvest, and celebrate.

Building something from content requires seeds.

What are you doing to help?

Photo credit, starmist1

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Mister Tom Klein from Digital Scientists sent me along this interview I did with him as part of the Thomson Reuters Innovation Summit. Despite the fact there’s lots of background noise, it does sum up a lot of ideas I often share at speaking events. That was a great event, orchestrated by Digital Scientists, and featuring Guy Kawasaki, Daniel Palestrant, and a few other folks. It’s just under 9 minutes long.

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Brian Conley, video journalist and creator of Alive in Baghdad has been jailed in Beijing, China, according to sources. He was there as an activist and a citizen journalist, which is no stretch for Brian. He’s lobbed himself into hostile territory ever since I’ve known him: Iraq, Mexico, and now China.

The whole story is here. I received my notification by Josh, who also points out the need to bring this story to a much larger stage than our blogs.

If you can, spread the word far and wide. I’d like to see Brian again soon.

Complete side note: just before the picture above was taken, Brian and I were standing alongside the stage at Video on the Net. He leans over to me and says, ‘I think I’m going to go up there and kick the podium over as the start of my speech.’ I said, please don’t. It would be really messy and cost me money. Now, I wish I’d let him, just because he’s that kind of activist.

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