What do you DO with it? Using Twitter as a tool

I’m often asked about Twitter and whether it’s “any good” for business.

Actually, to be honest, I’m just as frequently asked about what the hell Twitter is in the first place.

Here’s the crash course from Wikipedia:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Anyway, when asked, my short answer is ususally “It’s as good as you want to make it; if you have the time and energy to dedicate to using social media tools like Twitter, then go crazy.”

But that answer is usually followed by another question: “Yeah, but what do you do with it? What’s the point?”

Here’s the point — anything that fosters weak ties is a good thing.

For example, imagine this scenario:

1. A potential customer visits your blog and sees an invitation to follow you on Twitter.
2. She uses Twitter herself, so she clicks the link and checks out your feed.
3. She likes what you have to say and decides to follow you. Now she can stay up-to-date on everything you tweet.
4. Three months later you happen to tweet “Just finished helping Customer X with Problem Y.”
5. She reads the tweet and sits up in her seat. “I’m having Problem Y right now!”
6. She heads back to your site, using the link you’ve added to your Twitter profile and calls you. Twitter’s value suddenly hits home.

Convinced yet? Here’s more on using Twitter as a tool and how to pick up more followers from Guy Kawasaki.

And incidentally, you can follow my tweets at http://www.twitter.com/aaronwrixon