Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza
According to cnet news and TechCrunch. Twitter has received $250M in capital to fund current operations and growth, from a group of undisclosed investors. Twitter has been in use since 2006, with people from all backgrounds and companies from all verticals joining in the conversation, and thus making Twitter into a more useful tool. If you haven't yet, you need to start paying attention to this social networking tool now.
Last April I wrote an introductory article describing Twitter, how to sign up and how you might use it for general networking purposes. In this article, I am going to assume that you have set up an account, you are following some interesting people, and that you have a few followers of your own – all of which makes for an interesting and more enjoyable Twitter experience. We're going to build on that foundation and talk about some tools that will make your Twitter-life easier and hopefully a bit more productive for your business.
For interactive Marketing, Twitter is an excellent tool. With a user base numbering over 5 Million (and growing), it's a tool you need to pay attention to and learn. Many large organizations are already using Twitter to creatively”humanize” their brands and customers' experiences with their companies. NASA's JPL has created mission-specific accounts such as @marsroverdriver, @SpaceCenterHou, @MarsScienceLab, @MarsRover, @MarsPhoenix and @CassiniSaturn, which are fun to follow if you're interested in what Nasa is doing, several major airlines (i.e. - @virgindotcom (I also follow @richardbranson, but his Tweests are less frequent), @SouthwestAir, @JetBlue), @WholeFoods, @Zappos (a rapidly growing online shoe retailer) to name a few. There are many more great examples to review, but in my opinion, using your real name and picture is the best way to promote networking and relationship building. Non-profit organizations are even getting into the act (shameless plug – check out a non-profit I helped start: @saproject). Bear in mind this tool has only seen two full years of market exposure...
So how can you start to leverage Twitter to your advantage? Here are some tools to help you get started:
The Twitter client presents real-time text feeds from your Twitter-universe (or “Twitterverse”, for short). If you start to follow more than a dozen people, your conversations can get a bit confusing. When your Twitterverse starts to climb into the hundreds or thousands...well, it can get pretty noisy and frustrating!
Tweetdeck is a client you install, that can break up these conversation streams into more manageable threads. The default column contains the same information you see on your Twitter page, while you can set up additional columns for direct messages that people send you, replies from others to your Tweets, and just about anything else you'd like. For example, if you wanted to see what I was up to recently while attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, you could set up a column to search on #ces09 and you would see Tweets from anyone attending and tweeting about the trade show (FYI – CES was savvy enough to set up their own Twitter account - @2009CES – which they used to update attendees to great effect). Even though this tool is still in “public beta”, it can definitely make your life easier.
Twhirl is another client that helps make your Twitter life a bit more manageable. It's similar to Tweetdeck, but my colleagues who use it absolutely RAVE about it – stable installation, ability to cross-post your Tweets to multiple platforms, automatically shorten long URLs (important when you want to share a web page and are only limited to 140 characters!), and you can automatically post images to Twitpic (Twitpic is an application that allows you to take pictures from your phone or camera, and share them with your Twitterverse – but more on that later).
Last but not least, here are a couple of “how to” tips to help you get more out of your Twitter experience.
One of the easiest and most interesting aspects to Twitter is the ability to get new perspectives on all different kinds of information – everything from earthquakes, to space missions, to conference session and breaking news events world wide. For example, I saw and read about the Mumbai terrorist attach about 2 hours before I saw anything from a major news outlet. In fact, I was able to link up a senior correspondent from ABC news' online bureau with several people on the ground in Mumbai.
Click in this paragraph's title and you will be taken to the search window page. No account to set up, no need to login – think of it as “Google for Twitter”. In fact, right below the search window there will be several “trending topics” (i.e. - the most currently searched topics on Twitter, at that moment). This is a page to bookmark and keep handy
It's just what it sounds like – it tells you your “Twitter Grade”. It doesn't really mean anything, but it sure plays into one's ego gratification needs to see where they rank relative to a Twitter population. Supported by Hubspot (an online / Web 2.0 / Search Marketing firm), Twittergrader will even suggest other Twitter users whom you might be interested in following. One way I've used this is to find people who are local to where I work or to where I meet be traveling. Every so often, people will organize a “Tweetup” - an offline meeting where Twitter users will get together to enjoy each other's company and converse face-to-face (what a concept!). I have met some really smart and unique folks this way – people whom I otherwise would most likely never have met. If nothing else, it is an amusing distraction while you are on hold with a customer service representative!
Take this information and use it to make your Twitter experience a more enjoyable one. I'll write another article in a few months profiling organizations that are using Twitter effectively to enhance their brand and thus their relationships with their customers – companies like Southwest and Jet Blue airlines, and NASA. In fact, NASA recently held a Tweetup for their Twitter followers at JPL, where attendees were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at interviews with Mission engineers. I think NASA is really doing a great job of using social media to connect with a wider audience and build support for their organization. You can see more examples at this page), etc. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to “DM me” (i.e. - send me a direct message on Twitter) and I'll be happy to help if I can.
Until next month,
Chris / @ChrisKauza
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