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Twitter is a unique social networking tool that businesses can use to enhance the performance of their e-commerce or business website. Twitter allows you to monitor, interact with, and direct Internet surfers with relatively little effort. While Twitter has the potential to improve the efficiency of your online marketing efforts, in order to use it successfully you need to know what beneficial functions Twitter can offer your business.

The basic premise behind Twitter is simplicity. The primary function of sending messages out on Twitter is to let people know what you are doing (in 140 characters or less). These little updates may be sent out via mobile texting, instant messaging, or via the web.

Promotion

Twitter is a great tool to use for promoting your website, products, and/or services. If you operate an e-commerce website then you can use Twitter to promote special sales, new products, hard to find products, or special savings programs. These ‘tweets’ can include information about the product being promoted, they can include reviews from your customers or they can include news snippets about the product.

On the other hand, if you are the owner of an information oriented website or non-commerce based website, then you can use Twitter to promote the publication of articles, blogs, and new widgets posted on your website. It is important to include a link in your tweet to the specific article, blog or widget that you are promoting. You will also want to include information, reviews and news snippets about your information or about the writer of the article or blog that you are promoting. One suggestion and something that is commonly seen is the usage of URL shortening services, which there are plenty of. You can find one just by searching for it in Google. These handy little tools will shorten the character length of any URL you wish to include in your tweet. This is extremely helpful since your tweets are restricted to 140 characters.

Crisis Control

Another function that you may wish to use Twitter for is crisis control. Hopefully you will not need to use it in this manner, but, in a worst case scenario at least it would be available. When your business experiences a crisis, such as a product malfunction or an internal scandal, you can use Twitter to control how the public views your crisis by creating and delivering strategic pieces of information via Twitter. For example, you can issue a product recall notice via Twitter that explains why the item is being recalled and what your company is doing to fix the problem so that it won’t happen again. In order to be effective as a crisis control tool the timing, frequency and monitoring of your and other people’s Twitter postings will be important.

Announcements

Twitter can also be used to broadcast special business announcements. These announcements can be about products, such as the launching of a new product or service, they can be about job vacancies, or they can even be about special promotions that your e-commerce site is planning. These announcements can be released on a daily, weekly, monthly, or ad hoc basis. To make them effective you will need to post them in advance of the event, as well as post follow-up comments that encourage a dialogue to begin about your announcement.

For example, if you are launching a new blog in January you will want to post lead up Twitter posts in November and December that explain what the blog will be about, why it will be a must read, and to generally create hype for your blog. In January you will want to promote you blog via Twitter with links to your blog and topic highlights. After your blog is up and running you will want to tweet every time a new blog is posted.

Monitoring

While it is important to contribute content to Twitter on a regular basis in order to promote your website, it is also important to monitor what others are posting. As the owner or designer of a website you will want to monitor the Twitter posts about your company, your products, the information that is being published that relates to your website’s topic and to other related topics. The data that you collect from your monitoring activities will help you to make adjustments to your content, products, or business practices to ensure your customers are satisfied with what you offer them.

Media Relations

Media relations is another function that matches up well with Twitter too. Under this function tweets will be monitored, responded to, and initiated. When a media source tweets about your products, company, or website (good or bad) you need to read the tweet and respond to it. For example, if you get a bad tweet from a newspaper reporter saying that your products are faulty you can respond by refuting the statements made in the reporter’s tweet and by offering links to positive customer reviews. You can also create a tweet that explains how customers can return faulty products for a refund or an exchange. This will help to reinforce that your e-commerce site is dedicated to customer service and to their satisfaction. On the other hand, if you get a positive tweet from a media source you can respond by thanking them for their positive review of your website or products, and then add more information about why your blog, website or products are the best in their industry.

Be Real

It’s important to realize that the overarching reason for Twitter’s success is that it is social in nature. Interaction is why it works so well. Transparency and honesty in your tweets is ultimately what builds a good following on Twitter. People want their interaction with you to be genuine.

It’s also important to remember that if you’re going to use Twitter as a business tool, make sure that you remain professional and AWARE that people will read, respond, and react to everything you say.The words of wisdom here should be: be aware and conscientious of everything you say on the Internet (whether it’s on Twitter or in another format).

Twitter – Your Website and Your Business

Twitter is a great, free online marketing tool that can help you overcome many of the obstacles that cause online businesses to fail. It allows you to control the information that is being circulated about your ecommerce or information website, as well as release timely information about your company with relatively little effort. While it will take some effort on your part, Twitter can be a valuable ally in your business journey.