These blog posts are part of an ongoing column I write called, Content Critical. This column and others are available for wider distribution in newsletters and blogs. Please contact me at richard at lucidcontent dot com for more information.

Content Critical July 27, 2010

It’s a pretty safe bet that by now you have heard of Twitter. You may be using it avidly, or you may be trying to avoid it. Maybe you’re intrigued and need a bit more frosting on the cake before you bite. Well good news, this column is for you.

First, Let’s Dispel The Myth
Twitter is not about what someone had for lunch. Or breakfast. Do some people use it that way? Yes. Just like some people talk only about themselves at the dinner party. Here’s what you do. Ignore. Do not follow. It’s that simple.

A Whole New Way of Communicating
On the face of it, a “tweet” (the message that you send out via Twitter) with its 140-character limit, seems an awfully limited way to engage with other people. After all, what can you say in 140 characters? As it turns out, you can say a heck of a lot.

Here’s a recent tweet from the Wall Street Journal’s Small Business Section:

Here’s a brief announcement pointing to something of value. The link takes you to a Wall Street Journal article that helps small business owners manage mountains of resumes. In less than 140 characters, at least two important business objectives were reached: 1) WSJ promoted published content and 2) WSJ informed the business community about something helpful to them. If that were all there was to Twitter, it would nice. Cool, even. But we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Customer Service Has Been Twitterized
There are some big, big names on Twitter. Dell. Comcast. JetBlue. Southwest Airlines. Whole Foods. Zappos. The list goes on forever. Here’s one simple reason why those companies are on Twitter. Their customers are on Twitter.

If your customers are on Twitter, and your marketing is sufficiently energized and resourced, then your organization should be there. Plus, the Twitter platform and even its limitations, make it ideal for quick and direct communications between individuals.

And don’t discount the power of negative or positive publicity. If someone on Twitter finds themselves very unhappy with Dell, or JetBlue, or Whole Foods, (or just about anyone) and decides to Tweet about it, lots and lots of people are going to hear about that, very, very quickly. And if you’re being taken to task, you can quickly address the problem. If you are present. Conversely, positive news can be “re-tweeted” and can also spread like wildfire.

Comcast in particular, in the person of ComCast employee, Frank Eliason, has earned a well-deserved customer service reputation by using Twitter (@comcastcares) to serve their customers in a very direct, very efficient way. Here’s an example below.

In this tweet, Mr. Eliason is asking a customer to send him a Direct Message (meaning not viewable by anyone other than the two people communicating) so he can help this customer.

The ways in which you or your organization can benefit from Twitter is simply too big for this space. But I hope I’ve given you a couple of things to think about. If you would like to learn more, here are two very well crafted articles on the business of Twitter.

TwitterforBusiness-1 by small business marketing guru John Jantsch
Twitter 101 for Business – A Special Guide by the folks at Twitter

Enjoy! Next week: The home page of your website is all wrong. Discuss. Follow me on Twitter – @lucidcontent