OffCoarse

This graph (from venturbeat) shows the use of twitter among other forms of social networks. The idea of Twitter is: if you can say it in 140 characters you can tweet it across the world, and people will listen, and they do as shown by the graph above. So people are using Twitter but not necessarily correctly nor getting the most out of it. There are different ways to use Twitter and here we are going into how to use Twitter for  Corporate use, and how to use Twitter for personal use. The general point is Twitter is a very specific tool and you need to stay on topic, and reduce your noise to get the most out of this tool.

Corporate accounts:

1. Separate Accounts: Now you can brand your company with a twitter account. Start an account for your CEO, your Company and one for your companies central purpose. Brand your CEO as hip, cool, and someone to know. Brand your company as the best in your field, and then brand your companies central purpose. The key is to separate them out so that they are always on topic and can build following’s around those accounts.
   • Example: Home Depot could have a do it your self Twitter account, talking about how to install showers. A Home Depot Corporate account keeping up with the companies performance, store events, deals, coupons and the like, and a HomeDepot CEO account giving the company a real face in the virtual world. (They currently have @homedepot as a corporate account) If I am a management consultant I would want to follow the Homedepot CEO, but not the Homedepot “do it yourself” account, and like wise if I was a do-it-yourself guy.
2. Customer Service account: Find out when your customers are not happy in real time, then reach out and help them in real time. Great example is @ComcastCares. Use TweetDeck and set up a search for terms such as your corporate name, keywords, and topics. Make sure the account is branded and used just for Customer Service.
3. Sales/SEO Account: Search for key words and find people having problems that your products solve. Comcast does a good job on this one waiting for consumers to talk about them then responding very quickly. Amazing way to market, reach people when they are in need, for your product or service and help them. DONT SPAM THEM or URL bomb them. Use this account to drive traffic. Check out namecheap does to drive traffic from their twitter campaign.

Personal accounts:

1. Pick a topic: Pick a topic and stay on point, NOISE is bad. Remember nobody cares that your cat is coughing up a hair ball (unless its your cats twitter account), but they might care that your latest project hit a snag and your amazing coding skills solved it in a flash. Use different accounts for different reasons. GIThub is a good example, @Github is corporate account where Chirs Wanstrath talks about coding and his business but @defunkt is Chris’s personal account where he explains the exploits of his personal life.
2. Stay on point: Stay on point and talk about what your good at, and help others with those problems. Use TweetDeck groups, and search to find others in your area and make yourself well know as a resource. The key is to talk about it, after you have found out your expertise make sure you talk about it. Get jobs just by talking about stuff your good at.
3. Find others like yourself: Use the search features to find and connect with others who have similar interest. Understand #hastags and how to use them to do more effective searches. Use groups to seperate your followers into specific people who you care about what they say.
   • Example: If your topic is marketing you can have a SEO group, a work group, client group, etc.

In short you need to be using twitter and understanding what it is and how to use it correctly. Your company should have a profile, you should have a profile (if not multiple) and you should be using it to its full extent. Follow me on twitter and watch me talk about marketing, and the startup community @msweezey.