HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

“It’s a wonderful broadening experience to be on a social network” – Guy Kawasaki
Here’s a short clip of Guy Kawasaki explaining why he uses Twitter, more so than other social network sites. Twitter has created thousands of relationships for Guy, cut the cost of communication, and has made face-to-face meet ups anywhere in the world possible.
Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine.

http://fora.tv/2008/11/17/Guy_Kawasaki_on_the_Power_of_Twitter

Twitter Guy Kawasaki, Twitter

A post published last month on Pistachio Consulting’s TouchBase blog examines how a public relations team can successfully and non-offensively tweet on a client’s behalf.

Mike Keliher, (@mjkeliher) works in public relations for Provident Partners. Last month, he wrote a guest post for TouchBase explaining how to staff business accounts with multiple people. Mike understood that his web-aware client would use Twitter, that was a given, but the challenge was how to create a single profile maintained by group of users and still retain that cost-of-entry transparency expected of responsible Tweeters.

Mike feels that being honest with your identity on Twitter (as in life) is pivotal. He makes sure the client’s Twitter profile has integrity in the eyes of the Twitter community by establishing up front that it is a team writing the tweets. This is accomplished a few ways.

1) By making it clear on their client’s Twitter profile line bio
2) By changing their display name to add ‘Team’
3) By initialing tweets (we do this with our twitter profiles here at Invoke)
4) by creating a link in the URL section, that explains in more detail who they are and what they do.

Back in September, famous Tweeter / social media whiz Chris Brogan published 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business. Brogan’s list is broken down into 5 categories: First Steps, Ideas About WHAT to Tweet, Some Sanity For You, The Negatives People Will Throw At You and Some Positives to Throw Back.

The list is long and contains an array of ideas, from simple, no-brainers (#2 – add a picture), to some goodies like:

#17 When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
#24 Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
#48 Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.

Numbers 31 – 40 are less ideas for businesses than Twitter criticisms detractors are likely to toss out, but they’re still notable as preparation tools because these types of comments do come up.

Whether you’re new to Twittering for business or just curious about better ways to use the micro-sharing tool, Chris answers a lot of questions. Beyond just business practices, his list is a handy guide to the world of Twitter; it’s definitely worth a peep… or a tweet or two.

Twitter for business

Medialets uses a clever Twitter promotion strategy.

Everyone enjoys winning something, and contests are fun way to get involved. They’re also a powerful tool for gaining new clients and generating a buzz around a product. Contests create an engagement between consumer and business, and empower the audience to help determine an outcome. They’re interactive and democratic–in short, they’re what social media is all about.

Medialets is a creative ad network for native mobile applications. Like us, they believe in innovation and transformative thinking. Last week they held a contest using Twitter. It provides an excellent example of how Twitter can be used to cross-promote two things: a concert and a company.

The contest offered 2 free tickets to the Girl Talk concert in New York. Medialets produced posters with three easy step instructions for how to enter:

· Follow @medialets
· Send a tweet beginning with #medialets explaining why you should win tickets
· Direct message us at @medialets with a) what company you work for b) email address and phone number c) what kind of phone you have

While we don’t know the results of the contest, this, to us, represented a great example of how Twitter can be used in new and different ways. Possible outcomes? Depending on where they put this poster or online graphic, Medialets likely attracted plenty of followers. Presumably some of these followers would have added to the conversation online by passing along useful information about the company, musician and/or the contest. The concert itself may have been better attended as a result. And by requiring entrants to use a #medialets hashtag, Medialets increased their search ratings.

Twitter for business

Last week Jonathan Kash from Pistachio Consulting wrote an article about Molson’s use of Social Media, including Twitter. Ferg Devins, VP Government and Public Affairs of Molson Canada, answers questions about how Molson connects with their community. The article provides some great information about corporate Twitter usage and how fully engaged Molson is in social media.

Tonia Hammer of Molson’s PR Team provided great examples of their Twitter use:

Events: We use Twitter to live-tweet and monitor events. For our Brew 2.0 events in Toronto and Vancouver, we followed the tweets to get feedback and also to share thanks, photos and video.

Promotions: We’ve done tweets with offers – discount code for ShopMolson.com, taxiguy discounts for the holidays

Soliciting Feedback: We ask questions about new websites, promotions, or what people would like to hear from Molson.

http://pistachioconsulting.com/molson-social-media-case-study/. Jonathan Kash. Molson: Brewing Up Success with Social Media. November 13, 2008.

Twitter for business