The Five Ws of Twitter
by Christina Lee on August 26th, 2009
Who, what, when, where, why and how.
Journalists report those Five Ws (plus one H) of an event, then they end up reporting the full story. Small business owners answer those questions of a new venture, and they get the full story as well.
But for months, both are still trying to explore the full potential of Twitter. As of last week, this is how the story has developed so far, from a business perspective:
Who… is a Twanker and Twidiot? Both are people who use Twitter for impractical reasons, according to the Influential Marketing Blog – a Twanker, purely for self-promotion and a Twidiot, solely for insignificant updates, such as what they ate for breakfast.
The blog’s “10 Basic Rules of Twitter (and How to Avoid Being a Twanker)” is a good start for beginners, though this etiquette guide could also set a few veteran users straight. For one, it recommends referring to people by their Twitter names on Twitter.
Imagine Twitter is like a play and every user is an actor. You wouldn’t call a fellow actor by their name on stage,” the rule reads, “you would use the character’s name.” Read more at the Influential Marketing Blog.
What… does Chris Brogan do with Twitter? Well, first, here’s why small business owners should care: Brogan, president of New Media Marketing Labs, works with mid to large-sized businesses to improve their online marketing and public relations communications. But his free services are just as valuable. Throughout the day, at chrisbrogan.com, he serves as a social guru for people with any type of business.
Brogan has more than 93,000 followers because instead of answering, “What are you doing?” as Twitter prompts, he answers, “What has your attention?” And with that question in mind, he promotes products, people, services and other things he thinks are cool at a 12:1 ratio — “12 them, 1 me.” Read more at ChrisBrogan.com.
Where… is that Tweet coming from? According to recent developments, you may find out real soon. Twitter is working on adding latitudinal and longitudinal data to tweets – meaning, that the 140-character messages could also be given an exact location.
Since the location data would only be stored with a Tweet for a short period of time, marketing experts see the feature as best fit for limited-time offers.
“A small business on Twitter could potentially use the location feature to reach out to local customers, or a Twitter user hungry for pizza could search for nearby pizza joints offering specials,” said Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times. Read more at the Twitter blog.
When… is Twitter going to cater more to the needs of business owners? Sooner than some may think. Though Twitter will remain a free service, premium commercial accounts with access to detailed analysis are currently in the works, as reported by DigitalBeat.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone also hinted toward the debut of a new set of corporate-specific application programming interfaces (APIs) that would allow business users to “more effectively engage with the community, while increasing strategic visibility,” as Solis said. “We want to build statistics or analytics that let users know – ‘How am I doing on Twitter?’” Stone said. Read more at DigitalBeat.
Why… use Twitter when my customers don’t? As founder of the first Twitter for Business consultancy and co-author of Twitter for Dummies, Laura Fitton (@pistachio) has found five major reasons why.
For one, Fitton points out that Twitter can be used as a platform to aggregate opinions built around any business or industry. Furthermore, said opinions could be gathered via widget and posted onto your business Web site – no Twitter account necessary.
“That’s a great free customer sentiment engine, way to listen to what’s really going on,” Fitton said.
Read more at HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog.
How… can one drive traffic with repeat Tweets? In two rather informal experiments, Entrepreneur magazine columnist Guy Kawasaki decides to see if taking self-promotion to another level would reap even greater rewards (in this case, clickthroughs).
In his first, he reposted one Tweet four times, approximately eight hours apart: “Power tip for anyone interested in social media: sign up for this. http://om.ly/FmGG I use it every day to find stories to Tweet.” The four posts received more than 5,000 clickthroughs, and also resulted in 700 people signing up for the service he plugged, SmartBrief.
The experiments also yielded a few complaints, though Kawasaki is hardly losing sleep over them.
“I look at complaints this way: What would happen if you told Jack Bauer (“24”) that you’re going to stop watching his show because of all the Cadillac commercials?” Read more at the American Express OPEN Forum.
Readers, is tweeting now a part of your daily business routine? Explain why or why not in the comments.
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