This is my keynote from Webcom Montreal, November 2008. The slides are below. I’d love to hear your thoughts. As you can see, I’m pretty passionate about the topic!

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Thank you Federal News Radio hosts Jane Norris and Tom Temin for having me on this morning to talk about the business and government utility of Twitter. Thanks to the fast action of their web guru Chris Dorobek, you can already listen to the interview online. I referred to the folks in this TouchBase Blog post by Hillary Hartley on Government use of Twitter. Listen here.

This is a guest post Samir Balwani of the Internet Marketing blog Left the Box. He writes about social media strategies and how businesses can better utilize the web. Follow him on Twitter or sign up for his newsletter.

The post below features some pretty well-known case studies, but if you are new to Twitter for Business, this is a great place to start.

Twitter has become a popular business tool for everything from Public Relations to Customer Relations Management.

It’s an integral part of business social media campaigns but because of its youth, Twitter strategies are still vastly misunderstood. To better understand how people are using it I decided to explore the three corporate stars of Twitter. I asked each to describe how they’re using social media in 140 characters.

Zappos

One of the best things that Zappos did was create their twitter.zappos.com page. It shows their dedication to keeping in contact with their consumers, and gives people a rare look into the company itself.

What does this level of transparency bring? Trust. The less a company is perceived as a black hole the more people trust them.

When a business is no longer seen as a business but a friend, you overcome the distrust of online shopping. People feel safer using your site with their credit cards and know that returning something won’t be a hassle.

Not only are the Zappos employees easy to contact but the CEO is using it consistently. Tony doesn’t only push out press releases, but instead talks as if he were any other employee. He’s the point man for delivering discounts and conducting research for Zappos on Twitter.

Their use and the Zappos Twitter page has created an online fan base. Not only are they able to generate buzz quickly but they’re able to take care of PR problems right away. If you don’t think Twitter, along with great PR, hasn’t helped make Zappos what it is it now, you’re sorely mistaken.

Ford

Scott has taken Ford’s social media campaigns to a new level and have really used Twitter as a major part of the strategy.

Ford introduced multiple Twitter accounts based on what they talk about. You can follow @forddriveone, @fordtrucks, or @forddrivegreen depending on what you want. Not only that, but Scott has said before that each department will have a team sending out messages and chatting on Twitter.

They’ve used Twitter to create a strong customer relationship. Scott has been known to generate buzz about new launches (for example, the new Mustang) and is quick to track any Ford mentions.

The brand’s social media strategy spans beyond Twitter and is also targeted towards bloggers. For example, they have invited bloggers to events. Twitter allows them to keep in touch with these bloggers and the Internet-savvy fans of Ford.

Comcast

Comcast has taken customer service and super-sized it with Twitter. Frank is in charge of @comcastcares, which is the company’s response to some public relations mistakes of past.

Frank monitors Twitter for any mention of Comcast and works to quickly alleviate any issues. At the same time, he offers great customer service.

The brand uses Twitter for customer service, and with it, public relations. By quickly resolving any problems people might have, they save themselves from having an Internet public relations fiasco.

It’s smart because many of Twitter users are bloggers and business owners, and we know the power of bloggers and how a minority can make a lot of noise.

Twitter’s ability constantly monitor people’s feelings lets brands target aggravated (and happy) customers. You’re able to create a relationship based on helping them use your product and letting consumers know just who you are. Using it to mold and grow relationships means better public relations, more brand evangelists, and more customers.

Related:

• Motrin’s Twitter Moment
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• Let Pistachio Consulting help your business get started

Editor’s Note: Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for facilitating business relationships, better connecting with colleagues and engaging individuals on similar topics. Guest blogger Johnny Makkar reports on his efforts to get fellow employees to take the plunge and try Twitter. These featured articles from the TouchBase Blog may also be useful.

Getting co-workers and friends started on Twitter:

Would you like to change the fact that not many of your co-workers are using Twitter? Encouraging and getting co-workers signed up for Twitter can be very challenging. When I mention Twitter to non-users, they most likely have heard about it but don’t know how it works or what benefits it will provide them over simply having a LinkedIn profile and communicating with connections through email. I wanted to get my co-workers on Twitter because the company I work for is global and I do not get to interact with many of the people in the other Sydney and London offices. So I drafted an introduction email and sent it out to all the staff. Here is an excerpt from that email:

First, watch this video if you have no idea what Twitter is about:

Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, Image by Laughing Squid

Second, read this guide by the Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, the largest online shoe retailer in the United States, at http://twitter.zappos.com/start. In summary, Hsieh wrote an open letter to try and get his employees to start using Twitter after he found value in it. He now has 448 out of his 1,600 employees using Twitter to get to know other co-workers and stay in touch with each other.

As a result of my outreach, I was able to get a handful of co-workers signed up. Out of those handful, a few have been using it consistently and some already mentioning to me how they see it can be valuable to them and the company as a whole. The CEO of my company was also very pleased to see that within a couple days, we got our first shout-out when one of our followers mentioned he attended a meeting with one of our clients and said that we rock. My full post about the experience Getting co-workers and friends started on Twitter, includes my introductory email and a follow up email. You are welcome to copy, edit, and send out versions of these emails our to your co-workers to get them engaged on Twitter.

If you need to show them further proof of Twitter’s benefits, I have another post, Using Twitter for business networking and even finding a job, that digs into one of many specific business and career benefits of Twitter. It outlines tips on how to grow your network on Twitter while keeping your career focus in mind:

Use the search at search.twitter.com to find specific tweets about companies and recruiters hiring. Search for specific titles you are interested in like ”community manager’ or more generic terms like ‘now hiring’. Also, check out TwitHire which is a free service that has begun aggregating all job related tweets. Take a look at this article which explains TwitHire in more detail.

Get creative with the ways you network on Twitter (or any other social networking site). Plain and simple, more followers will equal more opportunities. The people with the most followers on Twitter gained those followers from doing something very creative or because they are very knowledgeable in what they do and love to share that knowledge. That’s why they have thousand’s of people listening and why you should be listening to. They way I think about it, using Twitter effectively to follow an industry expert is similar to reading a book written by them. There is a huge potential to learn more from the person both ways.

There are new job opportunities mentioned everyday in tweets. These tweets are not only from users, but from some of the many companies who are ahead of the curve and realized there are other uses for Twitter besides public relations and customer service.

Johnny Makkar is a Business Blogger who writes about the social web, mobile, tech, and all things analog digital at Love for Biz. This is his first guest post for the TouchBase Blog.

TREND WATCH: Recruiting and Job Hunting on Twitter. Twitter is proving increasingly valuable to both recruiters and job candidates. Beyond microblogging for market engagement, a great business use of Twitter is actively following candidates of interest (and candidates actively following businesses) to open up new recruiting and career opportunities. Subscribe to the TouchBase Blog for more on this and other “Microsharing for Business” trends.

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Either directly or indirectly, Twitter is loaded with market intelligence for your business. With an estimated 3 million current users who are voraciously talking about what makes them happy and what makes them angry - your products and your market segment are likely being discussed. Let’s take a walk through how this works.

Using Twitter search, we can quickly find mentions of our products or company in specific context.

Here we see an easy one (unfortunate for Qwest), but as Qwest we’d like to see who is talking about us. A quick check for “Qwest Sucks” brings up a litany of complaints about Qwest and its service. Many of these are very specific complaints that can be cross-checked, verified and used to improve service. It’s also an excellent measure of popular opinion about our company.

Mind you, opinion’s not always negative. Another search for “Qwest Rocks,” shows that sentiment about Qwest isn’t all negative.

Qwest customer services has indeed made some users happy. Qwest should be directly thanking these users for their patronage and letting them know they enjoy working with them.

For the less positive ones, Qwest should also respond and let them know they have been heard.
But we don’t need to be so specific. Suppose we are opening an Italian restaurant in Portland’s Pearl District. Maybe we want to know the buzz on other Italian restaurants in Portland and the Pearl District in general.

Here we see that there are a few tweets talking about Italian food in Portland and at least one pointing us to more detailed information in specific blog posts.

We can also look at the frequency of posts to tell us how hot Italian food might actually be in Portland and compare that to some other types of food.

We can also check on the Pearl District itself. Are people going to the Pearl District? Why are they going there? Is an Italian restaurant going to fit there?

We can see by the age and frequency of tweets that the Pearl District in general is more popular in Portland than Italian Restaurants.

Is Twitter going to be your only source of Market Data? Certainly not.

But Twitter is a great, free repository of general and honest conversation from which we can gather a wide range of information.

Jim Benson is a partner at Modus Cooperandi and blogs at Evolving Web. Jim is a management consultant who uses social media tools and principles to help his clients communicate.  Follow him on Twitter.

Guest Post by Mike Keliher

“Teamwork” courtesy of DavidBole on Flickr

Albert Maruggi and I have started working with a new client, a brand new Web start-up, and we’re already seeing some folks mentioning the client on blogs and in Twitter conversations. Beyond that, we’ll obviously be working with a Web-savvy crowd, so having a strong presence in these online communities is important.

“Being on Twitter,” then, is a given. When we have four people on the team, both at our firm and at the client company, who are actively monitoring and interacting via Twitter, the challenge is how to work with a single account profile while still conforming to these amorphous norms that “govern” the Twitter community.

The CEO of Client made sure, early on, to sign up for a Twitter account with Client as the username. A good start. The @Client Twitter profile hadn’t been used much yet, though, because building their product, their Web platform, has been the focus of their energy. So we’re basically starting from a blank slate.

However, as individuals, those of us on the “Twitter team” are fairly active Twitterers under our own names. That’s an asset, as we each have a fair amount of rapport and credibility built up. We’ve demonstrated, at least to some extent, that we “get it.” We’re not just swooping in to “do some PR,” “drive some traffic” and move on to the next thing.

It’s a good thing to have so many people interacting on behalf of the client, and we’ll all surely continue to do so under our own names. But for some of our work, we’ll need to operate under the obvious and official @Client profile. The challenge is to make sure the people we’re talking to know who they’re talking to. Personality and identity on Twitter, as is the case just about anywhere, are important.

So how do we plan to handle this? Well, for starters, we want to make it clear that the profile is staffed by a team — even going to far as to change the display name to “Client.com Team.” Additionally, we’ll change the brief bio section to say something to this effect:

Info about Client.com and [the subjects dear to their hearts], from @[ClientCEO], @albertmaruggi and @mjkeliher.

We’ll also make a habit out of signing our tweets with our first name or our initials, so people will know who wrote each one. For example, my tweets might look like this:

Client: Client.com is looking for usability testers. If anyone in the Twin Cities area is interested, let us know. -MJK

I stole that trick from the team that twitters for NPR’s “Bryant Park Project.” All good ideas are made to be stolen, right?

Speaking of which, we’ll round out the tactics for twittering as a team (alliteration!) by using the all important URL field of the Twitter profile to paint a full picture of the twittering team. Laura “Pistachio” Fitton was the first person I saw do this. The URL field of her Twitter profile points to a page on her site that serves one purpose: welcome people who have checked out her Twitter profile and explain a bit about who she is and what she does.

In the case of my client, we’ll have a page that explains, in very personable, conversation language (sadly, a scarcity in the worlds of PR and marketing) who we are and why we’re twittering as @Client. After all of the above, it will hardly be new information, but it is an opportunity to put a little more meat on the bone and offer more detail and color than the miniature Twitter profile section allows.

Have you done anything similar to this? What’s your approach? Any ideas to improve this method? I’m eager to hear some other insights.

“Teamwork” courtesy of DavidBole on Flickr

Mike Keliher lives in St. Paul, Minn. and works in public relations for Provident Partners. He also helps produce the Marketing Edge podcast with @albertmaruggi

Chris Lynch was kind enough to interview me for this CIO Magazine article yesterday. I like the framework and examples he put together:

1. (Careful) Product Pushing. Examples: @JetBlue announcing their eBay auctions; @KodakCB tweeting about their product in action.
2. Community Outreach. He nods to @WholeFoods and @PopeyesChicken and urges “think about the communities you serve, online and offline”
Image via Wikipedia
3. How-to and Service Questions. No surprise to see @Comcastcares, but cool example from @Pandora_Radio too. (An embedded PR lesson: provide good service to influencers like Chris, which Twitter disproportionately includes, and get good coverage)
4. Humanizing the Head Honcho. @Zappos is rightly praised for his leadership here. That Jonathan Schwatrz’s Twitter stream is really just a TwitterFeed from his blog boggles the mind a bit.

More on that last point, it makes MUCH more business sense to get your non-blogging executives to microblog(/share) than to try to make them over into bloggers. It just integrates better with their lives, workflow and responsibilities, and offers many of the same benefits. Padmasree Warrior of Cisco is one of my favorite examples of this right now. (Look for a post about getting your executives to productively Twitter shortly.)

Who’d have thought this blog would ever concern itself with “breaking news?” Certainly not me. But BusinessWeek Senior Writer Stephen Baker is currently using Twitter to write an article about Twitter.

Using the #hashtags convention, you can follow @stevebaker’s Tweets and the ensuing pan-Twitter conversation in any number of ways. You can also follow the discussion at Twemes or Hashtags.org or using a plain old Twitter search tool like Summize, Terraminds or Tweetscan. My client NewsGator built the widget that is below.