1. Listen-  Use the tool search.twitter.com to figure out what companies are saying about you.  And it’s easy, when you click the above url, you will see a search bar.  Simply put your companies name in the search bar and see if anyone has been talking about you recently. If there are a lot of results, go ahead and click on the advanced search options and narrow it down based on location, places, or attitude. 

2. Tweet- Now you need to set up your own twitter account and actually tweet (a new word meaning write something that you are thinking or doing).  For instance if I own a car wash, I can tweet something like, “The Extreme Car Wash is $10.55 tomorrow only.”  There are two types of tweets that will help the company.  And indirect tweet, and a direct one.  The indirect tweet is when your employees or customers are talking about you.  On the other hand, a direct tweet is when the actually company tweets. 

Some of you are probably thinking, that’s great, I’d love to tweat, but what do I say.  Well, talk about what you’re doing for your customers, what you’re doing for your employees, talk about offers, talk about something professional but completely unrelated.  If we are using the car wash example, I will tweet a website that has information about how to take care of your car.  What is important is that you have a twitter profile that contains a link to your website.  Not only will it drive traffic to your website, but it will also help SEO.

3. E-commerce- If you sell things online then you definitely want to advertise and post a link to the page where they can buy your products.  People are getting on Twitter, and if they find something relevant they are buying it.

Believe it or not, companies are posting jobs and people are responding/getting hired in 160 characters or less. And to think that 30 years ago people read about jobs in the newspaper! Following companies can pay huge dividends, as companies are literally posting open positions, asking people to apply, and then selecting candidates from Twitter.

As a senior getting ready to graduate from GCC in May, a job sounds appealing. How do I go about getting one on Twitter? It’s first a good idea to start out by reading up on others’ strategies, like the article here. Then it would be wise to start following companies of interest. By paying attention to their trends and what they’re putting out, I can probably gain some insight on who they are looking to hire! I can do some research and check out their pages, and then apply for a job! Who knows, maybe I’ll land something?

In the meantime I think I’m going to tweet about this!

While many businesses have used Twitter as a way to promote their products and gather feedback from customers, another more subtle application of Twitter exists and is widely used by business nation-wide. Twitter Lists, a simple way to follow a group of people possessing similar characteristics. Twitter Lists can allow a business to create a list of leading industry voices, competitors, and those who follow the competitors to gain insight on what is happening in the industry.

Twitter can also be used to understand the psychology of your competitors. Jennifer Van Grove from Mashable makes clear the best way to do market research using Twitter, “create a list of your biggest brand advocates and loudest brand naysayers and hang on their every word — even if that means reading up on their weekend activities.” A simple unassuming Tweet from a company CEO can have profound implications especially when taken in the context of what is happening at the company and in the related industry. If you were to carefully follow a competitor long enough, you would begin to understand his word choice, emphasis, tone, and what is truly important to him. Twitter Lists would allow you to understand the mind and personality of your competitor.

Twitter, “the best way to discover what’s new in your world.”

I don’t own an account and I don’t understand what it is all about. From my perspective it is a way for a self-absorbed society to talk about themselves and expect other people to care. Now, some people have more of a reason than others because people care about famous people (for some reason). A lot of famous people have very popular twitter accounts, that people can follow and see what they are doing. Its still under the assumption that people care what they think and do every second of the day.

I am being negative. Twitter definitely could be used in a non self-absorbed way. If you and your family or friends don’t live near each other it is a way of staying up to date on the day day doings of those people close to you. This kind of social media could bring families together in a way that not many other websites do.

I will have to give twitter a chance before I condemn it.

50 Cent has been making money outside of his music. After taking up a 12.9% stake in H&H Imports, the company that carries his headphones, 50 Cent turned to Twitter to promote the company. The stock which started at 10 cents a share skyrocketed to 39 cents over the weekend after 50 Cent tweeted multiple times that H&H was the stock of the year to invest in.

The Tweets worked as 50 Cent netted over 8.7 million dollars.

The only problem is the SEC is looking into filing a law suit against both 50 Cent and H&H Imports, for his actions. The company itself had been losing money over the last year and is also heavily in debt. All signs that this run up in stock price is only from 50 Cent and his manipulation of the markets is something extremely frowned upon.  While the company may face trouble for their actions, its stock is still soaring reaching a high yesterday of $1.16 over a 10x increase from where it started about a month ago.