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… Continue reading

Obama’s transition team has garnered much of the spotlight surrounding “Government 2.0″ in recent weeks, and with good reason.  He is on a quest to bring transparency to the federal government via blogging at change.gov and “fireside chats” on YouTube.  It will be an uphill battle to say the least, but the quest is noble; and as someone fighting for this type of change at the state government level, I most certainly hope he succeeds.

But there is big news out of Washington this week (as opposed to Chicago) on the microsharing front.  The State Department waded into the social media waters in September of 2007 by starting their blog Dipnote.  A month later they joined Twitter (@dipnote).  It’s a less-than-ideal Twitter account, in my opinion, because it’s… Continue reading

Dirk Röhrborn is the founder of Communardo where he is involved with Communote, an internal microsharing application. In this interviewFAQ, he provides insights into the application and decisions for its implementation and execution.

Q: Why did Communardo develop a new micro-sharing platform?

A: We have worked extensively with quite a number of social media tools, e. g. open source and enterprise wikis and weblogs, in projects for our clients. We have been using tools like these also internally for many years. However, a lot of very important project team communication cannot be captured. People use (sometimes abuse) e-mail and instant messaging and many good ideas, reasoning behind decisions, risks, problem solutions etc. is buried in mail boxes… Continue reading

I admit that I’m a car guy; there’s nothing like a ride to help clear your mind and forget the drama of the workday. Several months ago I met Eric Miltsch, IT-Web Director for Auction Direct USA, a multi-state auto retailer focused on the used car segment. Eric was kind enough to share his thoughts and experience with micro blogging and how it’s helping to transform their engagement with customers.

Background

“Our unique selling proposition is communicated in a casual, yet professional way. We answer questions, share valuable information, and get instant consumer feedback about their experiences, habits and desires. Online car shoppers are looking for information without the fear of being aggressively sold something. They also have a powerful voice and aren’t… Continue reading

Mashable’s startup review for TigerBow has raised a few questions regarding the subject of privacy and security online. This is a service that will allow anyone to send a real gift (movie or book at this time) to anyone they want via an email address or social networking ID such as their Facebook name. The gimmick is that you’ll be able to receive things without having to divulge your actual address which is nice when it comes to security. However, something about it bothers some people. They feel a little uneasy about this prospect of allowing potential… Continue reading

This blog post was written by Erica O’Grady (@ericaogrady).

Twitter To Go?

When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

If you’re reading this article, then chances are you’re already on Twitter, and you may even have experienced the power of Twitter for building your own personal or corporate brand. Recently, more and more companies have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to help manage their online identities making it increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd.

But Cohen and CoffeeGroundz have found a way to do… Continue reading

Congratulations (sort of) Motrin:

You are trending on Twitter!

Congratulations Motrin…

I’m going to take a wild guess that McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a Division of McNEIL-PPC, and their agency of record (Taxi NYC, from what we can tell at the moment) are not carefully monitoring Twitter right now. I’m also going to guess that you’re going to hear a thing or two more about this in the business press (WSJ, Forbes, AP, NYT) before it subsides.

The Fuss.

Many moms (and dads) who blog and tweet and are fans of “babywearing” are… Continue reading

UPDATE: The delete function has been restored, but you should still be smart and careful posting to Twitter for the reasons discussed below.

This is a fairly urgent warning to business users of Twitter that applies to everyone. Currently you cannot delete your tweets should you make a mistake that you wish to remove from your profile page.

Be careful.

To some extent, the ability to delete tweets in the first place is a false comfort. Once published, ALL tweets remain searchable in search.twitter.com, even if you delete them. Also, those following you by SMS and most Twitter clients receive the tweet immediately, or at least before you can delete it. As with email, “recall” is an illusion.

That said, it’s still nice to be able to remove typos, misdirected “dm’s” and… Continue reading

Would you expect a 222 year-old company would be fully engaged in social media? Yes, if it’s Molson; this includes Twitter, blogging, vlogging, Flickr and more.  As this came to me as a surprise, I was eager to find out why a such well-established company would take an active role on the Web. Ferg Devins, VP Government and Public Affairs, Molson Canada, was gracious to speak to me this past Wednesday.

It turns out community engagement has been part of this family-run company (now in its 7th generation) since the beginning. Banking and transportation are but a few of the new technologies pushed by the Molson family since its founding. Why? Beer is a social commodity… Continue reading

To Claude Malaison and his team at Webcom Montreal, congratulations on a successful conference and thanks kindly for the privilege of speaking.

I spoke (no shock) about microsharing, interpreting some of the “big picture” business potential for this audience of Canadian business and government leaders.

My slides are below. I’ll add the video as soon as I can get it to offload from my camera.