Like a good ex-librarian, I’m going to point you to links on using Twitter in your business, and give you a brief summary of each. (If you don’t know what Twitter is, watch this short video or click this intro link.)
Here are the categories I used: Why Twitter for Business? Getting Started with Twitter, How to Use Twitter Better, Community Building on Twitter, Local Twitterers, Getting Followers, Deciding Who to Follow, and Other Links.
Why Twitter for Business?
17 Ways to Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners These 17 ways, from Dosh Dosh’s blog, are: personal branding, get feedback, hire people, direct traffic, read news, make new friends, network for benefits, use it as a ToDo list, business management, notify your customers, take notes, event updates, find prospects, provide live coverage, time management and analysis, set up meetings, and acquire votes.
Making a Business Case for Twitter Connie Benson’s case is: customer relations, crisis communications, crowd sourcing, brand building and communications, lead generation, customer references, announcements, and professional networking.
Is the Entreprise Ready for Microblogging Tools like Twitter? Business uses are: emergency broadcast system, knowledge management, training, expert identification, seeing the connectors, inclusion of external stakeholders.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business Chris Brogan gives us: first steps, ideas about what to tweet, some sanity for you, negatives people will throw at you, positives to throw back. Specifically “Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.”
Affiliate Marketing on Twitter: Does It Belong? This blogger’s answer is no.
The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007… (aka Why and How I use Twitter) As a news source, knowledge network, virtual water cooler, way to stay up to date with friends, travelogue, track conferences, pr/marketing tool, learning tool, as fun, daily lesson in humility and brevity.
The Evolution of Brands on Twitter. Jeremiah Owyang describes baby steps, walking and running for brands using Twitter.
Getting Started With Twitter
Newbie’s Guide to Twitter How to get started, how to hook up your phone, sending Twitter messages. The basics.
Birds of a Feather Twitter Together. Basics from the Wall Street Journal‘s Mossberg.
How and Why to Use Twitter for Small Business This video introduces Twitter and how to use it. Business uses are: to disseminate breaking news; share product information, coupons and events with followers; and handle customer service issues.
Twitter for Biz? 5 tips on setting up a business account on Twitter.
Twitter for Business: 10 Things to Consider Before You Get Started Basic business considerations.
From Twits to Tweeple: Why I Embraced Twitter and Why You Should Too Nice step-by-step screen shots to show you how to set up and use Twitter.
Still Trying to Understand Twitter? Think of Post-It Notes. Three types of notes: messages you want to hear, messages to you, and messages about you.
You Should be Looking for Small Businesses on Twitter Anita Campbell answers the questions “What the Heck is Twitter?” and “How Do I Learn More”, giving 6 links for newbies.
How to Use Twitter Better
Twellow: The People Search Twitter Should’ve Been Describes Twellow, a website to search for Twitter users by directory category or keyword.
All Links are Not Equal. Why Twitter Links Grow Conversations “…you’ll likely see a big difference in your response rates when you get picked up by another blog, verses when you get picked up on Twitter.” Why? Because Twitter users are engaged.
Ogilvy Public Relations — Twitter Strategy Series
3. Corporate Reputation Management
4. Event Coverage and Promotion
6. Nonprofit and Issue Advocacy
7. Media Relations and Twitter
The Creation of Twitter Best Practices Kristin Foster’s best practices for Twitter – 9 dos and 5 don’ts.
Why Twitter Should Matter To You: Twustomer Service Edition. Examples of using Twitter for customer service.
Why Twitter Should Matter To You 102: Uhaul Edition “While Twitter is incredibly helpful for a brand or an individual who wants to get proactively involved in a conversation – it’s also an essential customer service tool in today’s fast paced social media environment” Example — Uhaul.
Twitter Bootcamp for PR: a Recap Short video on new opportunities, best practices, case study, strategic planning, mastering the Twitpitch, how to use Twitter step by step, and pitfalls to avoid.
FAQs about Twitter and Public Relations Who should use, best way to manage, find relevant tweets, build my following.
Community Building on Twitter
How to: Build a Community on Twitter 10 to-do’s to build a community on Twitter. See especially 8 points of etiquette.
How Not To: Build Your Twitter Community Practical advice to avoid common mistakes.
How Your Company Can Build a Community on Twitter Monitoring, talking to them, brand your profile page, get your blog to work in your Twitter profile, does it work?
7 Ways to Use Microblogging Services Like Twitter for Traffic and Brand Exposure 7 tips and also a list of 6 microblogging networks.
Local Twitterers
Twitter Local – Find Out Who’s Tweeting Near You Twitterlocal.net “takes a location, postal code or a state, together with a mile radius, and spits out an RSS or XML feed with tweets from that area.”
Twitter and Local Search About using Twitter locally, including Summarize.com.
Getting Followers
How to Get More Twitter Followers: Some Methods that Work Maximize visibility, don’t follow the favorite methodology of spammers.
How To Grow Your Twitter Following (Even if You Are Not A Marketer) 6 ways to get more people to follow you.
So How Do You Find People on Twitter? Twitter search, Twitter Packs Wiki and Tweetscan are his answers.
How to Grow Your Twitterfluence and Twitter Grade Discussion of these two Twitter rating tools, and how to boost your rankings.
Deciding Who to Follow
How Do You Decide Who To Follow on Twitter? Factors are ratio of followers, bio, avatar, recent posts, location.
How To Get ReTweeted
Viral Tweets: Rand Fiskin on How To Get Re-Tweeted 7 factors that make a Tweet go viral.
Other
Books on Twitter for Business on Amazon
Three Twitter Tricks with Twitterfeed Integrating Twitter feeds into blogs, Pownce, and Facebook.
Twitter ToolBox. 140 Twitter-related tools, widgets and plugins.
Develop a Twitter Landing Page. What is a Twitter landing page and how to build one.
Tweetbeep.com A site to put in keywords and get emails with tweets, like “Google Alerts” for Twitter.
Make Money from Twitter. Be paid to include ads with your tweets?
5 Top Excuses for Not Joining Twitter: 1. It’s a waste of time for business. 2. Why do I need to know this nonsense? 3. My Customers aren’t on Twitter. Or my industry is too niche for Twitter. 4. It takes too much time. 5. I don’t want to give people an opportunity to say negative things about me and my company.
Twitter Demystified and Debunked 4 myths: 1. It’s microblogging, or something. 2. It’s all about answering the question “What are you doing?” 3. It’s a time suck, and 4. There are no problems in Twitterville.
Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates A Social 6th Sense: “Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefying trivial. But the true value of Twitter…is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse.”
Wikipedia on Twitter How it started, microblogging alternatives. See also a list of prominent Twitter users.
And much more on the TwitTip blog “Twitter Tips in 140 Characters or More.”
The Ultimate Small Business Twitter List A great list of the Twitter names of key people in small business and online media.
I’m sure I missed your favorite Twitter link, so please leave it for me in a comment.
@pcorwin Please follow me on Twitter. I tweet what I’m wondering about and working on, plus good links and my posts. I don’t talk about late planes or cold pizza. As a sample, here are my latest tweets.
I track “how to use Twitter” posts as a surf the internet. Click here for my Twitter “bundle” on Delicious to see what I’ve turned up lately.
Another of my Twitter posts: Who’s On Twitter? What Happens When You Shake Hands with Your Followers?
See other posts in my Online Marketing Series, which has 20 link-rich posts on 18 online marketing techniques.
Peg, thanks for including my post in this great list. For your readers that are new to twitter or social media marketing I highly recommend Chris Winfield of 10e20′s post “Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster or Great Tool?” It’s a fantastic overview of the variety of ways people and companies are using Twitter. IMO it’s one of the best presentations of its kind.
What a great list and thanks for much for putting it together. Follow me at @grantgriffiths
Wow Peg, this is an awe-some list. Thanks for sharing. I am definitely going to link to this and share it with my readers.
See where you rank on http://www.twitterholic.com
Thanks Peg for including a link to my list. Your list is great! I’ll be linking to it for my readers too.
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I have learned quite a bit about Twitter from the information you have provided. I intend to go further into the details. Thanks so much for giving some direction and guidence to be a better Twitterer….
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Great resource. It is going to be so much easier to realize the full potential of twitter after going through all these links. I think it might take me a week finish reading everything.
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Great blog here, such a wealth of content.