Twitter is for business, too. Many companies are setting up a Twitter account and "tweeting" coupons and specials, as well as product information and announcements. This is the ultimate in permission marketing right now - people will follow your Twitter stream because they want to if you make it worth their while. (See Dell's Tweeting of coupon codes for an example of a good way for a company to use Twitter.)
I have found some handy resources that I want to compile for corporate Twitter users.
1. Search and see who is linking you on Twitter with BackTweets. Companies should be searching for their customers Twittering about them. This is an opportunity to engage.
2. Hash Tags (such as #hiring, #jobs, #tech) are used to tag tweets for searching and to designate the subject of a hash. Try Hashtags.org to see the popular tags out there. There is no "official" list of hash tags, they are just sort of created out of the universal consciousness. Does your company have an agreed upon hash tag? Has the Twitterverse created one for your company or industry?
3. Shortening those pesky long urls: use is.gd or another similar web page. Enter the long url and they give you a short one that goes to the same place.
4. You can use symbols - try TwitterKeys for a sidebar window symbol list . © ☞ ™
5. You can tweet an interactive poll - use the PollDaddy web page to quickly set up a poll. What a great way to informally gather information on what your customers are thinking.
6. Here is a list of some of the Twitter lingo from the Your TwitWiki:
@<username> <message>
This
means
you are replying to a user, or want to make someone aware that
the Twitter message (a ‘tweet’) is something they will want to see.
They will see it on their twitter page even if they do not follow you.
RT <@username><their message>
Re-Tweet. Sometimes
you’ll see a tweet you want your friends to see. Just send it again,
but put RT for re-tweet at the start of it, and the @<username>
of the person who originally wrote it.
D <username>
Not
used directly in the Twitter web interface, but third party programs
that use Twitter, and SMS, will see the D as a direct message and send
the message to a private inbox that only an individual user can read.
#<word>
Hashtags are used for searching, using hashtags
The
hashtag represents a tag, so popular topics will get a hashtag and
people will add this to their message so their thoughts can be searched
for by everyone. These are usually quite short, and made up on the fly,
so there is no central index. UK readers might want to look at #bb10
for the latest series of Big Brother, or #bbcqt on Thursday nights for
political discussion around the BBC show Question Time.
