Move aside corporate blogging, corporate microblogging aka "Twittering" (due to the most popular service for this being Twitter) is here!
A micro-blog is essentially a stream of short blog posts (on Twitter each post is limited to 140 characters) that typically reflect what the micro-blogger is doing at that moment or provides links to useful sites or interesting images and videos etc. Micro-blog posts (or "Tweets" as they are known on Twitter) can be submitted by a growing number of methods, including submission via the Twitter website, desktop software, through your mobile phone using a special SMS number or through automated syncing with your Facebook feed among other methods.
Equally, there is a growing number of ways to receive other people's Tweets or private messages to you, whether it is to your phone, a variety of social websites or even desktop software.
One of the keys to using Twitter effectively is the concept of "Following". Assuming you are logged into Twitter, when you visit someone's Twitter page (in my case it is twitter.com/AlexTrup), you will be presented with a "Follow" button. By clicking this button you will receive any Tweets posted by that person to your incoming Tweet feed (which you may be receiving using any of the methods mentioned above). Depending on the person's settings, they are notified that you are now following them and depending on their interest in you, they may decide to follow you back. If you both frequently check your Twitter feeds, your notifications for private messages or directed Tweets (created by placing @username somewhere in the Tweet) you can have a conversation something akin to instant messaging.
So here are some examples of my most recent Tweets that will hopefully clarify my explanation above. I am not Tweeting nearly as regularly as many other users of Twitter, but I hope it still gets the point across.
With very little effort you will pick up tens or maybe even hundreds of followers, and if you are a celebrity, über-geek or shameless self-promoter you can even reach tens of thousands of followers.
For the most part, people (even business people) are using it as personal communications medium to discuss (the often mundane) goings on in their lives, with some people posting tens of Tweets an hour - EVERY WAKING HOUR! So let's go beyond this and so how we can bring Twittering into a corporate situation. What can you do with what is essentially a captive (and potentially large) audience? Could you send them advertisements in your Tweets? You could, but you would very quickly receive many abusive incoming Tweets...
So what should you be doing? You can use it as an alternative to your company's RSS feeds, posting links to your latest corporate news items or links to industry news stories. This is OK, but not particularly interesting. Interactivity is the key using Twitter effectively - Get involved with your audience and those you follow. The more involved you are in the conversation, the more people you will entice to follow you.
One particularly interesting use of Twitter is resolving customer issues out in the open. This is something that US Internet Service Provider Comcast seems to be doing quite well. With a somewhat patchy reputation of customer service, a proactive employee, Frank Eliason, signed up to Twitter as ComcastCares. The primary objective of this was to provide support for all Comcast customers that needed it, in an open and transparent manner, as well as answering any questions for potential users. The response seems to be altogether positive and is something other B2C companies should definitely look to emulate.
Another approach is to use Twitter as more of an internal means of monitoring your employees' productivity. If you instigate that each employee should keep their Twitter status as to the tasks or projects they are currently working on, you can use it as a way to get a pretty good overview of what is going on within your company as well as how long certain tasks take to execute - which can result in more accurate client billing. Before you ask, yes there are privacy controls, simply go to your profile settings and check the 'Protect my updates' box, which will only let people you approve follow your updates.
Think of Twitter as further transparency for the inner workings of your company, whether that is transparency within your company or for current and prospective clients. Transparency builds trust, and when people trust you, they buy from you and recommend you to others.
If you have any other thoughts or ideas on how to use Twitter in a corporate situation, please leave a comment.