It seems that you can’t pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV or attend a conference without someone mentioning Twitter.  More and more individuals and businesses are flocking to use the social network for all sorts of uses, but should you be following suit?

In my view, businesses should approach Twitter in much the same way they would any other communications channel.

Twitter is seductive for a number of reasons – it’s free, it’s user base is growing exponentially, and it’ll bring your product to the attention to a whole new group of sexy young things you’ve been unable to access before.

But before you let your newly enthusiastic marketing exec loose, it’s worth taking a step back to consider a few points:

What do you hope to achieve from using Twitter?

•    Attracting new website visitors?
•    Making direct sales?
•    Growing Brand Awareness?

There are a number of issues to consider with each of these: you’re only likely to attract significant visitors to your site if you’ve really got something interesting, novel, or entertaining for them to look at.  The goal here is for your tweet to go viral (being retweeted by other users, therefore growing the audience exponentially with each retweet).  Be honest with yourself: is your new homepage really that interesting?  Is the 20% off on lawnmowers really going to be a hit among twitterers?
Also, consider how people use twitter – increasingly, it is being accessed through Blackberrys, iPhones and similar devices.  Is your site even accessible to mobile?  You’ll also need to shorten your urls using a service such as ow.ly,  bit.ly or shorturl to give yourself room in the 140 characters for your blistering call to action.

Trying to make direct sales through twitter is likely to fail miserably.  People are highly unlikely to follow you if your only interaction with them is your latest special offer.  The value of twitter comes from interaction, and those who do well through it do so building relationships, establishing trust, and positioning themselves as authorities in their field.

Aim to be useful to your followers. Provide them with information that will help them – a new company white paper, your thoughts on new legislation affecting your sector, even share information written by others. In this way, you will build lasting “relationships” with your followers and attract referrals, retweets, and brand awareness.

But how do you raise brand awareness in twitter?  Are you just firing messages out into the ether hoping that the right people will be watching the public timeline at the right time?  If so, then you’ll be waiting a long time for any positive results.

There are a number of ways to improve your chances: firstly, there are a number of grouping systems, such as wefollow.com and twibes.com enabling those with similar interests to identify themselves, and these are probably a good place to start.

Secondly, and in my experience, one of the most effective methods, is the use of hashtags (#) attaching one of these in your text enables those following a given theme to receive your message.  For example, a placing “#SEO” in your tweet, will ensure that anyone else following that tag will receive it.

This can be particularly effective around “real world” networking events.  Attending a big conference?  Have a search and see if there’s a hashtag being used by other attendees, (if there’s not, now’s your chance to create one).  Use the hashtag to post tweets during the event with your views on the speakers, etc. Not only does this give you a great chance to share your knowledge with fellow delegates, it’s the perfect opening to arrange a face-to-face meeting with fellow hashtag using attendees.

Incoming messages

A lot of marketers still fail to understand that Twitter is meant for 2-way communication. It’s not an extension of your e-newsletter distribution software and should not be treated s such. Choosing to “Follow” other users should be based on more than just hoping they’ll follow you back.  You can glean great insights into many business-related areas with effective targeting.  Indeed, I personally use twitter much more as an “inbound” tool than outbound.
If your company is big enough, you’re likely to get mentions from other twitterers, negative and positive, and responding to these quickly and efficiently can prove hugely beneficial from a customer satisfaction point-of-view.  Search for “#Huddle” on search.twitter.com and to see an excellent example of how an organisation can use twitter as a highly effective customer interface.

Of course, ensuring an accurate response to incoming messages, or just monitoring messages containing your brand names isn’t easy from the twittr.com website. Thankfully though, there are a number of desktop based tools to help you manage your twitter communications in a more organised manner, while there are also some useful iPhone apps enabling you to manage twitter on the move.

Each have their advantages and disadvantages, but here are some I’ve tried and liked:

Twitter clients

Twitterific (iPhone and Mac) my current iPhone Twitter client – easy to use, reliable, and providing all the functionality you’re likely to need on the move.

Twitterfon (iPhone) similar to Twitterific in terms of usability, but with a slightly less sexy interface

TweetDeck ( PC, Mac) The current leader of the desktop based clients, and one of few made to work as well on PC as Mac.  Enables you to follow your choice of search terms, hashtags, etc in real time.

Seesmic ( PC, Mac) Similar in appearance to Tweetdeck, with the same suite of features. Little to choose between the two, although I find Tweetdeck’s interface a little clearer.

PeopleBrowsr ( PC, Mac, Web) currently in Alpha (ie, not market-ready) has a number of interesting business-focused tools, and enables you to import contacts from numerous networks, including linkedin, flickr, facebook, and more.  Worth keeping an eye on.

Tags: Web 2.0 | Marketing | Twitter | Social Networking