Too busy to Tweet? The strategic value of making Tweet time.

Unlike American Tweet machine President Barack Obama, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, claims to be ‘too busy’ to use Twitter since her release from detention. No doubt she is busy, but could she be limiting party support by not using social media to engage and build community groups?

But it isn’t just in politics where community groups are bread and butter.  The same is true in business, as you strive to engage and nurture your clients through to sale. You want their ‘vote’ as much as any politician does.

Why make time for Twitter?  What’s the strategic value?

With an estimated 200+million users - double that of LinkedIn - an increasing number of businesses are using Twitter to build relationships with key audiences, share information quickly, and gather market intelligence and insights. Twitter has even launched a Twitter for business page.  It really is kicking off.  Here’s what Twitter can do for your business:

1. Community development – connect with your target audiences, key influencers etc. and nurture those relationships through regular communications.

2. Position your company as an expert voice – through useful, relevant and compelling Tweets, your community groups will start to rely on you for your information and insights, putting you ahead of the competition.

3. Generate direct leads – a great example (thanks to Neal Schaffer) is US phone company, Avaya, who was monitoring Twitter and picked up a question, ‘Shoretel or Avaya? Time for a new phone system very soon’. The public nature of Twitter (and their media monitoring service) meant they were able to contact this individual within 15 minutes.  13 days later they closed a $250k sale.

4. Media coverage – journalists use Twitter more than ever for real-time information and for general research.  Your latest company Tweet may well contain exactly the information they want.

Where do you get the best value out of Twitter?   Has it ever led to a direct sale? Or do you find the relationship building part the main point of it?

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• Best Practice
• content sharing
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