Yes, Twitter really can help your business

Twitter. The word suggests that the conversation will be shallow and trivial or just plain gossip. While it’s true that there’s plenty of meaningless babble on Twitter, it’s also a great tool that can help businesses in several ways.

Twitter can be used to broaden your reach and to connect with potential customers, to share best practice, to service your customers, to obtain feedback and to promote your events and special offers - you get the idea. In short, it’s a free tool that you can use to help grow your business.

There are currently approximately 107 million people on Twitter, and around 300,000 are joining them every day. Some of these people are your customers and potential customers and it’s likely that sometimes they are talking about your company. It’s even more likely that they are talking about your type of business or product. You have the opportunity to be a part of this conversation.

For example, perhaps someone is in need of advice on building a shed in their garden and you own a DIY store. You could reach out to them and offer assistance and information and this could lead to some business. On Twitter, the conversation is open so not only will your advice be of use to the guy building the shed, but also to other shed builders too. This is an approach that Home Depot - @HomeDepot - takes in the United States and it works very well for them.

In London, a baker has set up his oven with a Twitter account at @AlbionsOven. When the cakes and biscuits are ready the oven tweets an announcement along with photos of the freshly baked goods. I like this imaginative use of Twitter, and it’s great for their business with the account having nearly 2000 followers.

Whether your aim is to improve customer service or increase sales with Twitter, the key to success is engagement. Twitter facilitates interaction with your customers so you should take advantage of this and engage with them rather than broadcast to them. The above examples might have sparked some ideas already but here are a few more. To increase sales you could run competitions or special promotions. To improve your offering to customers you could ask people for feedback on an existing or new product. To improve your customer service, you could use Twitter as a more personal, real time and powerful alternative to the telephone or a call centre.

Finally, I love the Virgin Atlantic brand. Why? Well, before I flew to Los Angeles last year they picked up on one of my tweets where I mentioned I’d bagged a great fare. Within 10 minutes @VirginAtlantic got in touch congratulating me on my purchase and asking me what my plans were in LA. During the course of the conversation they gave me some great advice and hints and tips. So before I stepped onto the plane I was feeling great about my choice of airline. On landing I tweeted my appreciation and I’m still writing about it now.

Are you ready to join the conversation?