Businesses Take Action With 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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