4 Steps to Making Twitter an Effective Business Tool

While the Twitter population continues to grow at a fast pace, the primary use by businesses continues to be the distribution of relevant news from other sources. Relatively few companies are taking full advantage of the most effective use of Twitter – engaging with the audience.

Stephen Debruyn, a San Francisco consultant, gives us four steps you can take to make the most effective use of Twitter for your company.

1. Monitor
   Do not try to absorb the entire tweetstream. Start by using Twitter Search to identify tweets that are relevant to your business. Find out what’s being said about your company, products, services and competitors, or look for discussions and trends relevant to your industry. Advanced search options allow you to not only search by topic, but by geographic region or language.
   
   
2. Follow
   Start to follow people that you have found through your monitoring who consistently Tweet about topics of relevance. See who they are following; you might want to follow them as well. You can also take a look at Twitter directories, such as Twellow, which sorts people by industry.
   
   Once you start following people on Twitter, a large percentage will return the favor and start following you. You are now beginning to develop an audience. At this stage, however, do not expand your list of followers too quickly. Focus on quality, not quantity. Over time your audience will grow organically.
   
   
3. Respond to Tweets/Re-Tweet
   In your search for relevant tweets, you will come across those who are in the market for your product or services, as well as those who have questions or complaints. Responding in a productive, helpful manner to these issues is the most powerful use of Twitter.
   
   Going a step further, consider proposing questions to your audience. You can also announce events or provide live coverage during events.
   
   You can use Twitter for promotional purposes, but be subtle – blatant commercialism is frowned upon in the Twittershpere as it is in all social media. Focus on delivering content with a perceived value to your audience – such as white papers or Industry trend analysis. Also consider re-tweeting those tweets you have found to be relevant and that might be interesting to your audience. Use the direct message function in Twitter to respond directly to specific members of your audience.
   
   
4. Manage Your Activity on Twitter
   Once you have built a number of followers, you’ll quickly find you’ll need a way to manage the tweetstream. Use tools such as TweetDeck, a tool that will help you organize your followers in groups and search for key terms.

Be open, honest, and once you jump in, keep the tweets and useful responses coming.