Twitter for Your Web Business

I am a relatively new Twitter user, and although I might not be the best person to discuss the benefits of Twitter because of my limited experience, I want to share how I am using Twitter to help build my brands.   Twitter is a powerful tool that companies and people can use to promote and monitor their brands, as well as communicate with their customers.   In fact, many companies, schools, and politicians use Twitter and have a person or group whose job description involves Twitter communications.

For those people who aren’t aware of Twitter, it’s basically a rapid update service where users can enter short posts about what they are doing or what they are seeing. A perfect example illustrating Twitter’s usefulness is the day the US Air flight landed in the Hudson River.   Literally as the airplane was landing, people were adding Tweets about what they were seeing.   They also uploaded photos and videos to related sites, and several minutes before the news was reporting the accident, Twitter users knew about it – many of whom even knew it was a US Airways airplane.

How I use Twitter:

As a domain investor and domain blogger, I use the Twitter ID elliotsblog.   Most of my Twitter followers either found me by searching for my blog, seeing my initial blog post announcing my usage of Twitter, or found it through a specific keyword search.   As a result, I tend to post updates (“Tweets”) about what I am writing on my blog, what I see in the industry, breaking news related to the domain industry, and sometimes personal commentary. I feel like my blog is an extension of me, and I want my Twitter account to be an extension of my blog.   I see an increase in traffic when I post a link, and I find it’s a good way to communicate and have a conversation.

As a local online media professional with Burbank.com and Lowell.com, I’ve taken a slightly different approach in my initial days on Twitter.   The design of my Twitter accounts is an extension of their respective websites for branding purposes.   I haven’t really publicized my Twitter usage much with the sites (waiting until I am more knowledgeable and satisfied with the account look and feel), but once I am satisfied, I will add buttons on my sites to encourage people to follow my accounts.

The difference between my blog account and my local media accounts is that I have established relationships with domain investors, and I haven’t established many local relationships yet.   So in order to build my follower base on the media sites, I have been searching for specific keywords related to the cities and regions, and as I find them, I follow that particular Twitter user (assuming he isn’t simply announcing that he jut landed in Burbank).   The more Twitter users I follow, the more likely they will follow me and I will be exposed to their followers.

Just like they are able to follow my updates, I can also follow their updates.   If a major story is breaking in one of my cities, or someone writes an update about an event, I can be on top of it at the same time (or earlier) than the local media.   In fact, I learned about the Burbank Film Festival via Twitter a few days ago, and I will be adding information about it in the coming days.   This will then expose my account to the users who search for “Burbank Film Festival” on Twitter.   Perhaps they will add my account to their group of followers, and an update down the road will be of interest to them.

The exciting thing about Twitter is that I believe there are so many ways to use Twitter to meet potential clients or site visitors, find out about events, and stay on top of breaking news stories.   Twitter gives everyone a chance to be heard, and I can use it to extend the reach of my brands.