XBlog

One Spark to Start a Fire - Twitter Best Practices - Part 1/3

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”
-Fred Shero

At XNet we’ve seen the future of how businesses communicate with the community. We’re currently developing new best practices to take advantage of this updated model of communication.  Our focus is on effective strategies that lie outside of the hype surrounding the latest Internet tools.

Over the past few months we’ve been using Twitter quite successfully, and we thought it was time to share our experience. We don’t blab about how great our products are, or what we are eating at random times during the day, we communicate with our community, industry peers and thought leaders.  The focus of our Twitter usage is tuned to how it can be used in a larger strategic sense of mutual communication, network weaving and the relationship building.

- Arthur Zards, President of XNet Information Systems

What’s Your Style?

Twitter is the easiest digital media platform to build relationships on and many companies are wasting the opportunity by thinking of it like a forum for PR and company news.

Do you use Twitter as a sounding box?

A place for conversation?

Do you even use it?

One Spark to Start a Fire

Digital media has loosed the bonds of business communication. In this new found freedom many find themselves in a topsy turvy world, “condemned to be free” as the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once described the human condition.

While larger corporations remain mired in questions regarding digital media’s efficiency, small and medium sized businesses have an opportunity to jump ahead and accept the responsibility, and opportunity, to immediately engage their market. Platforms such as Twitter provide immediate insight into the interests, needs and opinions of over 17 million persons in the US alone.

Critics cite usage statistics to draw questions on Twitter’s efficiency, failing to realize that it only takes one spark to start a fire. Connecting to one person in a community can lead to engagement across the board. Those most active on Twitter are also active in other areas of their profession, and a targeted approach can lead to dramatic results.

There are no easy solutions. Valid arguments exist on both sides of the issue, pro and con, for business use of platforms like Twitter. With so many voices on this errant ship of fools sometimes you just have to dive in and see what sinks and what floats.

With that in mind, let’s talk about Twitter…

What is it?

Twitter is a digital platform where individuals and organizations can post 140 character messages that are visible to anyone following them, visiting their Twitter homepage, or monitoring applicable key words through a 3rd party platform.

What’s the point?

Despite its flaws, and beyond any hype, Twitter is good for a number of things, including:

•    Personal Expression
•    Business Intelligence
•    Content Aggregation
•    News Feed
•    Topical Discussions

And most important…

•    Engagement.

Finding successful ways to engage the market is a key ingredient in a good business development strategy. Twitter gives you direct access to individuals and companies. For this reason alone SMB’s and entrepreneurs should take a serious look at developing a presence on the platform. Twitter is a backdoor into the market, a social gathering to display your company and skills, and a convenient way to host links to content that develop the market’s perception of your business. Most importantly it’s a place to develop the relationships and conversations that allow all of this to happen without forcing hackneyed one way messaging down the market stream.

Let’s be honest

We often get stuck in either/or thinking.

Sometimes we can’t resist the “new thing” for no other reason than its crisp and shiny packaging. We’ll go and grab whatever has 10% more shine, rather than sticking with an old stalwart, because it makes us feel like we’re keeping up with the best and brightest. The same thing happens with digital media, the whole process is so new that it leads people to grab on without thinking things through first.

On the flip side sometimes we pass up new opportunities because they don’t fit in with our preconceived notions about how to get things done. We’re used to doing things the old way and we’ll keep plodding along the well worn path until something comes by to dig up the ruts.[1]

Over the next few posts we’ll go through some of the ways that we’ve started to think about Twitter, and digital communications in general.

________________________________________
[1] The reason for this is neurological. Our brains form familiar patterns of neurons and it takes less effort to move in familiar patterns than it does to create new neurological connections. Innovation requires us to avoid becoming victims of our brain!