The Benefits of Twitter - Personal, Professional and Business

By Annemarie Hunter - Search Marketing Specialist

Unless you’ve been sitting under a rock for the past few months, you would’ve heard of a phenomenon called ‘Twitter’ by now. It’s hard not to have; the ‘mirco-blogging’ tool has now reached critical mass due in part to its extraordinary usage throughout the US Presidential elections and its uptake among mainstream celebrities and media circles. 

So what is Twitter exactly?

Twitter is a free 'social networking and micro-blogging service’ that prompts its users to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ This is accomplished by sending short text-based posts (known as ‘tweets’) of no more than 140 characters in length to your friends, which are known as ‘followers’. Just sign up with your username of choice and you’re away.

It sounds easy right? And also...kind of pointless? I signed up to Twitter in July of last year and those were my thoughts exactly. To me, posting a short message about ‘what I was doing’ at any given moment was nothing more than a meaningless time waster. I really didn't care who was eating a banana cupcake or who was suffering from a sake-induced hangover.

But fast-forward 18 months and the landscape of Twitter had changed. I am now more selective with who I choose to ‘follow’ and realise there is some considerable value to be had in this tool. When used correctly, Twitter can in fact provide significant benefit on a personal, professional and at a business level. The following are what I’ve identified as the key benefits to using Twitter:

Twitter  - Personal Benefits

• Social element - communicate with and keep up to date with what your friends are up to and their whereabouts (and vice versa).
  
• Get to know people better - acquaintances become mates.
  
• Make new friends - connect with people who share similar interests and opinions from all over the world.
  
• Self promotion and personal branding (if you’re that way inclined).
  
• Ask questions, seek advice or recommendations - you’ll receive some solid feedback from your ‘collective intelligence’ of followers.
  
• Voice opinions, recommendations, thoughts, insights, rants and raves. Word-of-mouth has found a whole new playing field.
  
• Share information - link to useful, interesting or humourous sites, articles, resources, blogs etc. 
  
• Keep up with world breaking news, local news and current events. 
  
• Discover interesting, subject-specific or alternative news sources.
• Follow information on brands, products or people of interest - unfortunately most corporates, bands, celebrities and business moguls have had their usernames seized by squatters or abusers…numerous examples abound.

Twitter - Professional Benefits

• Keep up with industry news, blogs and influential people.
  
• Receive updates to events or conferences.
• Socialise and network with industry peers.
  
• Build industry contacts.
• Provide commentary, feedback and share findings.
  
• Tag and track discussions on specific topics, events etc - Hashtags is very useful for this.
  
• Seek jobs.
  

Twitter - Business Benefits

• Branding and promotion – gain exposure in a casual, social, personable environment.
  
• Brand monitoring/reputation management - Twitter Search and Tweet Scan are invaluable for this.
  
• Marketing - Twitter discussions have the ability to go viral very quickly. Tools such as Twitturly monitor the daily buzz.
  
• Build relationships - connect with current and potential customers globally.
  
• Build brand loyalty -  engage with individuals through direct messages.
  
• Notify followers of announcements, news, products, sales, specials, competitions etc - set up a Twitter feed so customers can subscribe via their mobile or RSS.
• Seek customer feedback - ask questions, spark discussions.
  
• Find potential new customers - easily identified through Twitter Search. Who's discussing what you offer?
• Market research - understand the lifestyles of current and potential customers.
  
• Monitor influencers - discover loyal brand advocates and follow them. Similarly, discover disgruntled customers and realise their concerns.
• Link to company articles, blog posts and press releases.
• Build traffic to your website - this could lead to potential sales, increased links etc.
• Provide live steaming at events and conferences. 
• Hire people, or get recommendations.
  

Granted there is also the inevitable downside to Twitter. Sure it can be a distraction and a fairly large investment in your time and attention. And there is still a great deal of pointless, trivial, inappropriate and ‘over-tweeting’ happening (I’ve been forced to 'un-follow’ a number of culprits). But there are some comical, entertaining, creative and clever uses of the service as well.  The more popular it gets, the more applications are developed,  Foamee and TwitterSnooze are just two examples.

As users become more experienced, discerning and understanding of the benefits that can be derived from Twitter, it will undoubtedly continue to become a powerful and influential global communication tool.