Posts Tagged ‘twitter’
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Utilising Twitter for business
Twitter is a free social network and micro-blogging service which has been everywhere recently. Companies big and small are using it across the world to get their message out there to thousands within seconds. Twitter does not need to be a one-dimensional method of communication however and if used properly it can be extremely beneficial for your business.
Most of you will have logged onto your Twitter account yesterday morning and seen a brand-new homepage, and very nice it is too. The key difference you will notice from the old homepage is that the emphasis has shifted very much towards searching the millions of Tweets passing over the network. It is the search function which can bring real benefits to your business or organisation.
How can Twitter benefit your business
The capacity to reach an audience of thousands with your latest business news or updates is obvious. But using the search function can take Twitter well beyond the trivial “what I had for dinner” notion and act as a key tool for you in business. Below are what we consider the key benefits of using the search facility within the network:
- You can instantly search for anyone talking about anything in your field of business, potentially giving you new leads
- It allows you to find anyone talking about or sharing an opinion on your product or service, giving you the chance to gather feedback
- Finding out what your competitors are up to or what people are saying about them has never been easier
- You can find any comments that have been made about your business, whether positive or negative
- The potential for business networking and making contacts is huge
Using the Twitter search function effectively
Twitter have made the search function very flexible by making use of some expressions which will allow your business to return more specific results. Here is an outline of some things you can enter in the Twitter search box beyond the generic keyword(s) search and how it can work for you (what you need to enter in the search box is in bold):
- near:harrogate – Makes your search results specific to a certain area, great if you want to work locally
- “looking for a website” – Matches the exact phrase “looking for a website” If someone is looking for a website, you can find them
- web design OR graphic design – Search Tweets which contain any of the words “web design” or “graphic design”, a lot more specific than a keyword search
- design -CAD – Searches for “design” but excludes all Tweets containing the word “CAD” (computer aided design), allowing you to exclude areas of business that you are not interested in. You can also exclude your own Tweets if you Tweet often enough!
- since:2009-07-01 - Returns Tweets which have been posted since the beginning of July. If your business searches regularly, keep a note of your last search date and you will only see recent Tweets
- from:mixd – See what a specific business or organisation has been saying
- to:mixd – Shows Tweets directed at a specific business or organisation i.e. Tweets that start “@mixd ….”
- @mixd – Search for references to a certain business or organisation i.e. Tweets that contain “@mixd”
- #help – Matches hash tags posted within Tweets, for people that have dedicated the tag as an important search term
When you look at the example below, you can really see just how specific your business can get with your searching and how powerful a tool it can be:
“looking for a website” OR “looking for design” -CAD near:harrogate since:2009-07-01 #help
You can instantly find anyone who is looking for a website or looking for design (not computer aided) near Harrogate since the start of July, who needs help! The benefits in searching this specifically are enormous.
Want to start using Twitter?
We recommend using CoTweet which is ideal to focus your company’s Tweeting and is used by some of the biggest companies in the world.
CoTweet allows your business to set up user accounts for as many people as you wish across your organisation, letting everyone contribute and manage your Twitter output. The main benefit of course is that it allows you to focus all your Twitter activity into one area. CoTweet also has a very good search facility, an archive and an inbox which allows you to see and store messages people have posted to your Twitter directly using the “@” symbol. We have been using CoTweet (still in Beta) here at Mixd for the past few months and we couldn’t recommend it highly enough!
At Mixd we encourage the use of Twitter as a marketing tool alongside any web project we undertake and hopefully you can begin to see the true potential of making Twitter work for your business.