Business and Twitter: A match made in heaven?

[giza]

Here's a great interview with Peter Shankman, who runs the Help A Reporter Out (HARO) mailing list. He explains what Twitter is, how it works, why it is useful, and how it redefines social media, especially crisis management/crisis communications:

If you have any sort of an online business or venture, you need to be on Twitter so you can communicate with your customers.

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

... informational yogurt.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is they're talking about "business crisis" management.

I tend to think more in terms of "people crisis", such as fire-fighting, search&rescue, and more importantly, political protests. If you can twitter, "Help! I'm on such-and-such street, and the cops are beating my friend!", you can have 2000 people coming to your rescue in less than 5 minutes.

Of course, that can also be manipulated very, very easily.

Just imagine if someone managed to hack Obama's twitter and sent out the message, "I give. We're fucked. I'm pressing the button. Fuck you all."

[kovucougar.livejournal.com]

I'm on Twitter. I can honestly say the last thing I want is every company I deal with being on Twitter, and me having to watch them to find out updates.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Then don't.

What Peter was referring to was companies using http://search.twitter.com/ and other services to watch people who mention them.

[atara.livejournal.com]

What giza said.

Perfect example is the ComcastCares guy on Twitter. He is a Comcast employee who searches Twitter for mentions of their company. If it's a complaint, he'll actually follow up and try to solve their problems.

I got a reply from Hyatt when I commented on how horrible the new Hyatt lobby was at the old MFF hotel.

It's basically reacting to your customers' problems, questions and complaints BEFORE they contact you directly about it... Not you having to follow them.

(We did a whole thing on Twitter and new social media in our public relations class this semester, so I feel like a wrung sponge on the topic...)

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

If you have any sort of an online business or venture, you need to be on Twitter so you can communicate with your customers.

Isn't that what they said about Second Life?

[giza.livejournal.com]

Good point.

FWIW, I don't think we've had any flying penises (http://www.gamepolitics.com/2006/12/21/second-life-event-interrupted-by-flying-penis-attack) on Twitter yet.