Nick Cifuentes

Twitter.

What if there was a business tool that existed, which could allow companies to listen in on discussions about how people are using their products, analyze what people are saying about them, and could allow that company to respond to that “person” directly.

It’s a tool that effectively hones in on embracing the early product adopters and influencers who are then able to share with their friends, followers and other individuals related to these “key” components.

It’s is Twitter. But more importantly, it’s a Twitter built around building discussion, interest and awareness of your products and overall branding strategy.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows a user to create short posts, or better known as “tweets” - which others then can follow, reply and respond to as they see fit.

But, you have to realize, this is much more than just telling someone what you had for dinner a last night or that you just finished your laundry. This is a tool that creates a bridge of genuine interaction with people who choose to use your products. If a company properly integrates this process - you can utilize Twitter to capture “conversation” between your company, customers, clients and colleagues.

Proper Conversation.

But you have to remember, Twitter is a conversation tool, and you have to treat it as such. People will STOP following and paying attention to you quickly if you blast them with blatant “marketing.” They don’t want to see your latest press release. Trust me…I and many other have quickly “de-followed” brands which do so. This kind of “tweeting” could leave your brand in a worse position then when it started, and leave your reputation tainted.

Get The Most Out of Twitter.

Who are you trying to reach with Twitter? Is it the key influencers in your field, or might it be the possible users who wish to engage in using your products? Choose one and stick with it.

To do this, it might be best to create an online persona for both - so think one twitter account to get the “news” out, another to harness customer complaints, and maybe a third to take part in the conversation. Just please don’t use one account for all three purposes - this will hurt you severely in the end.

Followers.

To use Twitter in the most effective way - you have to “listen” to the conversations and what others are talking about. As a brand, you do not want to go just follow 2,000 random people and hope that is going to work - think quality, not quantity.

To achieve this goal - utilize the many twitter search tools that exists in the social space. One very useful Twitter search tool is search.twitter.com to find people who are tweeting about you, your brand, competitors, and products you offer. Follow these individuals who you have identified as key constituents for your brand, and then begin to engage them back in conversation.

By following customers, clients, colleagues and leaders in your industry or field, this shows them that you want to “hear” what they have to say. These people will almost always “follow” you back.

Don’t Be Boring. Please.

Always remember to offer something of value to the conversation. It could be advice about your products, news about the company, quality information about what you do, or maybe the occasional joke - Twitter users want to be informed, entertained and kept interested at all times. Don’t constantly push self promotion with no value and consistent ad-rhetoric - this will quickly hurt your Twitter reputation.

Show interests in your users…share with them in their experiences, and ask them questions, engage them! This will quickly show them that you are interested in what they are doing, and will allow them to respond, follow, and possibly use your product.

Beyond Twitter.

Twitter has so much potential for harnessing conversation and interaction. Don’t allow the conversation to stop there. Tie Twitter to your blog and blog posts, link it to your Flickr account, Facebook & MySpace pages, and YouTube Channels…there is so much you can do with this platform and pushing it beyond the Twitter bubble will allow you to further expand your presence in the social media channels.

Utilize Those Twitter Tools.

Twitter can be a bit confusing to the newbie…but there are so many available Twitter tools to take advantage of that allow you to easily perform keyword searches, send direct messages, shorten URL’s and mark tweets as read or unread.

The Twitter website offers the advanced search tool, which allows you to enter keywords and seek out tweets. You can even subscribe to search as an RSS feed.

TweetDeck is a desktop client that allows you to run multiple searches that update in real time. It allows you to see your replies and direct messages in separate columns in the same interface. Twhirl is another client that acts in the same way, but a smaller interface.

Another tool I like to personally use is FriendFeed, a social media website that allows you to consolidate more than 45 different social media and social networking websites, including Digg, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Flickr, Stumbleupon, MySpace, and more.

And then in the mobile space, you have three fantastic Twitter applications for the iPhone, Blackberry and Treo. Twitterific for the iPhone, and TwitterBerry & TinyTwitter for the BlackBerry and MoTwit on the Treo are great applications to utilize - who knows when the next great thought might come to you? It could be when your standing in line for a cup of coffee or in a business meeting that just doesn’t end, or maybe your waiting on the runway for the plane to take off, either way - it’s more than just a fad.

It’s Twitter.

Fin.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Yammer.

So what is all this Yammer-ing about? After coming across a NY Times article posted Monday that spoke about one of my favorite websites Twitter, and another similar modeled website called Yammer, the question came up - microblogging for business? Yes, I know many people have asked this before, but when combining that question & the topic of non-existent ‘dollar-generating business models’ - what is the outlook?

I cam across Yammer last month when I noticed they won the TechCrunch50, and after reading about them in depth more yesterday - a very interesting point arose - the Twitter for the business world - could it really work?

Yammer, a service that mimics Twitter, but charges from the outset…(applaud). Sort of, Yammer is aimed at the corporate customers, and already has 60,000 users. And they aim to answer the key question, “What are you working on?” Their goal is to make offices more productive through updates on company events and work-related questions that will not clog e-mail boxes with mass mailings.

And how is that money made you ask? Well, TechCrunch, a Web 2.0 technology blog, that gave them the TechCrunch50 prize for start-ups, said they were “Twitter with a business model.” This is no knock @ Twitter though - they have been around since 2006, and have more than 3 million users, but have been criticized by some for their lack of a proper “business model”, as said by several VC’s. More on that shortly….

However, Yammer’s business model is interesting, because it spreads virally in a sense. Anyone with a company email address can sign up and start using Yammer for free. But when a company “officially” joins Yammer, giving an administrator more control over security and how employees use the service - it pays $1 a month for each user. And unlike Twitter, that will limit you to a 140 characters in a message, Yammer let’s you type as much as you need to. In Yammer’s first six weeks, it had 10,000 companies with more than 60,000 users sign up, although only 200 companies with 4,000 users are paying so far.

Now that is certainly not a massive amount of income, but Yammer is similar to what Twitter has been - a decision to grow first and monetize second.

Twitter has raised a reportedly $20 million from venture capitalist, and are similar in belief to the ‘grow first, monetize second’ - but has the economic downturn changed that mindset?

Last week, Twitter pushed aside engineer and creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and gave the job to Evan Williams, Twitter’s chairman and more experienced executive. This leads to that overall question…how does Twitter generate revenue?

Early next year, Twitter has plans to introduce many ways to introduce revenue streams into the current business model. I believe one idea is to charge companies that want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying.

It seems that many companies grew on the idea of first growing the product and then monetizing thereafter - Google began as a search engine with no revenue before turning a lucrative advertising model that turned it into an internet god. But any company needs to know, chances they will have ‘Google-like’ success - doubtful.

Let’s go back to Yammer though for a minute - obviously chances everyone @ your workplace is on a computer?  Very good. Now, let’s promote in-house conversation how? - emails do get very cluttered and does everyone read them? No.

I admit, I have never read everything that came from the ‘higher-ups’ from places I once worked for, that includes stuff from HR or other departments that just get overcooked in your inbox - you don’t have time, and many the patience to read it all.  So here comes Yammer - ‘a corporate Twitter’ that includes a bevy of security features, include limiting I.P. addresses, requiring passwords, cutting off ex-employees and removing certain messages. Once that company administrator takes over, Yammer charges a $1 per user per month.

Yammer has already recruited companies like Cisco Systems, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, motion picture companies, and a large casino company.

We have to look @ the obvious for a second though - Yammer is a new way to do a lot of stuff people already do in the workplace. Social enterprise software like SharePoint, Jive Software offer many of these features, as does Twitter and Facebook to communicate with co-workers. But with Yammer, will this more concentrated method of communication change the way businesses communicate?

I suppose all we can do is wait on this one.