How To Take Advantage Of The Social Powerhouse Called Twitter

Twitter:  What Is It Anyway?

Twitter is a nifty little micro-blogging platform, allowing you to express anything and everything, as long as it’s under 140 characters long.  It now looks like Twitter may become part of the Google suite, including such services as Blogger, Picasa and YouTube.  Why would Google be eager to pick up Twitter?  Twitter holds many advantages for both the lay-user and professional.  Let’s go over a couple of the former first, then we’ll get into the real power behind Twitter for professionals.

For the individual, Twitter is a quick and easy way to keep in touch with others.  A lot of famous people, celebrities, news anchors, authors, singers, government workers, scientists (including members of NASA) and so forth are using Twitter and you can interact with them directly through this wonderful website.

Many social applications have “friend” options, where you add someone as a friend.  In the case of Twitter, they’re refered to as “Followers”.  Particularly clever term for anyone needing a boost of self-esteem.  On your Twitter home page, you have a news feed that shows the latest posts by anyone you’ve chosen to follow.  Post regularly, and post useful information, and through no effort of your own, people will begin to follow you.

Messages/Posts on Twitter have become known as Tweets.  There are many independent applications being developed for Twitter to make it even quicker, easier and less obtrusive to your online experience to send a Tweet out to the world.  So let’s take a look at how Twitter works and I’ll share some tips on getting the most out of Twitter.

Twitter is Where it’s @.

An example of the power of Twitter is the ability of hold conversations.  Typing @username where “username” is the username of whomever you’re talking to allows you to speak back and forth with anyone on Twitter.  You can set these messages to the default public view, or you can make them private.  What’s so great about this is that Twitter is becoming a replacement for email.  When you get a really long email, do you sit and read through the whole thing when you first see it — or do you read the other emails, then wait until you get a moment to sit and go through the long one?

Exactly.  It’s much easier to send a quick message, wait for a response, then continue with another message, and so on, as opposed to sending a huge email all at once.  Sometimes a huge email is called for, but in most cases, it’s easier to talk in small doses and on the go.

Twitter is integrated with all the latest cell phones as well, so it’s truly conversation on the go.  Don’t want to pay extra for text-messaging services on your cell phone?  use Twitter instead of sending texts.  Make them private tweets if you like.  With many cell phones, you can even have the Twitter API notify you when you have a new message, just as traditional text messaging does.

# that.

Want to join a conversation or meet new people with a similar interest?  Typing #subject or some variation thereof, where “subject” is obviously the subject of interest, or spotting a #subject already in use, allows any number of people to track and participate in a conversation about that subject.  How?  RSS feeds.  Everything in Twitter contains an RSS feed.  That’s one easy way of tracking a conversation.  What’s another?

Best Twitter Applications For Your Needs

My favorite program/app for keeping on top of Twitter is Tweetdeck.  They had a few glitches early on, but they’ve since ironed things out.  I’ve tried several others, and they’re all great — Twhirl, Twitterific and so on — but, Tweetdeck is my current favorite.  Twhirl is great if you have multiple accounts and you want to keep them all open simultaneously.  So that comes in handy sometimes.  Business account.  Personal account.  Etc.

I also use the Firefox/Flock plugin, Twitterbar.  Twitterbar incorporates directly into the browser address bar, so all you have to do to post an interesting link and/or message, is type it in the address bar and click the Twitterbar button.

Take a look at how easy Twitterbar is to use.  Here’s the standard address bar once you’ve installed the Twitterbar add-on.  That light blue “t” is the Twitterbar button:

When you send a link, Twitterbar will automatically convert it to a TinyURL to save space, so you can send really long links and you’ll still have around a 120 characters worth of room left.  You can send the link by itself, or you can type in a message, such as this:

To send it to Twitter, you just mouse over the blue “t”, and it will show you how many characters you have left.  If you’re still under the limit, it’ll be green.  If you’ve gone over, it’ll be red.  If it’s green, just click that round green button, as shown below, and it’s off to Twitter:

Sounds like a pretty thorough explanation, but the process is really easy.  You’re reading an interesting news article online, for example.  You go up to the address bar and add after the URL, “Interesting article on *some subject*, let me know what you think.” Then click the “t” and you’re done.  Mere seconds to send out a message and get some feedback.  That’s the power of Twitter.  And that’s not even the major power behind the site.

Twitter:  The Socially-Powered Up-To-The-Second Market Research Tool

There used to be a search engine called Summize that allowed you to search Twitter posts.  A little less than a year ago, Twitter bought Summize and integrated it into their platform.  Now it’s Twitter Search, which you can find at http://search.twitter.com and, more recently, at your Twitter home page in the right sidebar.  This is why Google really needs Twitter.

Let me pause to relate a story.  I follow @MarsRover.  The NASA team involved in the Mars Rover project posted immediate updates on their findings as they happened during the project.  Generally, they posted them speaking from the perspective of the Mars Rover itself, which was a cute perk.  Well, one of the great finds from the Mars Rover was ICE.  The Rover started to dig to get a soil sample, and instead, found that just below the dirt in that location was a layer of ice.  They even posted photos via TwitPic.

Here’s the tie-in.  A few days later, I was reading various online news sites, and what did I find?  One of the biggest news sites, run by one of the biggest publicly traded companies, had just released an article about the Mars Rover finding ice.

I was days ahead of the news.  Those of us in online marketing will realize just how powerful this truly is.  I could have written and released an article on it before the major news sites and shows even caught wind of it.  If that doesn’t impress you, let’s take it to a brick-and-mortar, corporate level.

Twitter’s search engine is the most powerful market research tool ever created.  Search any subject, any service or product, and you get immediate feedback of what the consumers using those products think about it.  Let’s say your company just released a product.  You can track what people are saying about your product by searching Twitter.  Each search creates an RSS feed of that search.  Subscribe to the RSS feed of your search and you’ll be updated anytime someone tweets about it.

This means several things.  Here’s three major points:

1)  If you’re looking for a product to promote, then you can search Twitter and get a measure of the general opinion consumers have about that product.  Do they like it?  What do they like about it?  What do they not like about it?  What are its weaknesses?  Where can it be improved?  What type of people are talking about the product?
Which leads us to our next point,

2) If you’re developing a product, you can search for your competitor’s products and get the public’s opinion on the competitor’s weaknesses.  What didn’t they like about it?  What’s its shortcoming?  Where does it need to be improved?  Every product has a weakness.  You can now tailor yours to address the weaknesses left by your competition to offer a better solution for the consumer.

3) If you have a product, and you search Twitter, only to find out that there’s a generally negative perception of your product, you can start damage control on the spot.  It took a few days for the NASA find to hit news sites, so you potentially have a few days to try to remedy the situation before it becomes a major issue.  Stomp the problem before it takes a major PR campaign to resolve.

A Few Considerations

If I had to guess, I’d say that Twitter is going to release an advertising solution that’s tied to their search engine.  PPC style search marketing.  They have the base for it.  Even Facebook is doing it.  If the rumors are true about the Google deal, then it would likely be easy for Google to incorporate Twitter Search into their Search Network solution for Adwords.  Though, I would like to see a separate advertising platform for Twitter.  The real-time, organic nature of Twitter Search may necessitate such a new and unique approach.

I hope you’ve found this useful as not only an introduction to Twitter, but a guide as to a few ways to think about Twitter itself and how it’s useful in a personal and professional context.  I’d love to hear some comments if you found any of this helpful.

Technorati Tags: Google, Social Media, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Twitter, Twitter Search, Twitterbar, Twitterific