Why you should use Twitter

Tuesday, 21 July 2009 11:18

Everyone's talking about Twitter. For a change, this post is not to point out that Twitter does not make money and it's still a mystery to most as to how they plan on doing so. To balance it out, here's some reasons to use Twitter if you're in business.

In summary, Twitter enables you tell the world what you are doing in less than 140 characters. Commonly it's referred to as a microblog.

So what could you use for?

• Communicate updates to customers such as new products, outages, delays, events etc
• Follow industry leaders to keep up with the trends and what's being talked about
• Keep track of specific people you know
• Keep track of your competition if they are already on Twitter
• Monitor customer issues - allow them to tweet a message to you and your reply can be read by all your followers
• Provide mini lessons and tips
• Market your business - but be careful about a constant stream of messages that add no value for your followers
• Can even be used for internal communications
• Link to content that is deeper and richer

Fortunately Twitter is free to join - so start gently so and don't burn out!

Update:

According to recent reports, Twitter could have 12 million users by year end.