The Twitter Book

Chapter 6. Twitter for Business: Special Considerations and Ideas

If you're twittering on behalf of your company or in a primarily professional capacity, you've got a few additional challenges to make your Twitter account successful. In fact, everything we've said already applies to you; here we discuss additional considerations and ideas to make your company's twittering really sing.

If you want examples of other companies on Twitter, check out TrackingTwitter (http://trackingtwitter.com), which lists brands, media, television and celebrities. Twibs (http://twibs.com), another directory, isn't limited to brands. ExecTweets (http://exectweets.com) showcases the twittering of businesspeople.

Incidentally, if you're interested in internal micromessaging for your organization—which a lot of companies find to be an inbox-freeing revelation—two of the top providers are Yammer (http://yammer.com) and Present.ly (http://presentlyapp.com).

Listen first

The biggest mistake we see companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to push out information. In fact, it turns out to be a great medium for holding conversations rather than for making announcements.

People already on Twitter will expect your corporate account(s) to engage with them, so before you start twittering away, spend a few weeks or so understanding the ways people talk about you. Get a sense for the rhythms ...