Businesses Take Action With Twitter

By Serdar Yegulalp 02/26/2011 In only a couple of years, Twitter's gone from what seemed like a mere gimmick to one of the fastest ways to spread the word about something. That makes it seem like an ideal medium for a business to raise notice about its products and services, and in fact that's what a great many companies do. The problem is that the very audience you'll be seeking to engage with Twitter is also the same audience that has a built-in skepticism about social media. Twitter users by and large are entirely too conscious of how any segment of the Internet, or any communications medium at all, can be turned into a mere advertising vehicle -- and thus made that much easier to ignore. To that end, there are cases to be made both for and against Twitter when using it to spread information about what you do.

Dell Outlet On Twitter

It's important to have a real person behind your Twitter feed. Elise Osborn, the "live human being" face of Dell Outlet on Twitter, deals directly with other customers on Twitter with questions or comments.

From the outside, Twitter seems like a one-way medium -- a bullhorn for broadcasting. Right now, that's the most common corporate use of Twitter, as a kind of news ticker or early-announcement system. But Twitter's two-way nature means eventually, people are going to want to talk back -- and they will expect at least some response. In the end, Twitter works best as a conversational medium, not simply as a way to shout out. Because this approach is still so new, it's often tough for a company to adopt it properly. Many companies dip their toe into Twitter's pool by creating an official Twitter account, or sometimes multiple accounts for different divisions. Sometimes they do this without a clear idea of what that opens themselves up to: they're prepared to broadcast, but not receive.

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