Should you be using Twitter for your business?

Okay I think I need to admit I was wrong.

I’ve been telling my friends that Twitter is one of the silliest things in the world, but now I might have to eat my words…

You see, I was thinking about Twitter for my own personal use - i.e. wanted to know exactly what my friends were doing at all times. Who cares? Well, it seems like a lot of people do. In fact, I just started updating my Twitter profileyou can follow me at:

http://www.twitter.com/josesotillo
(So in case you wonder what’s going on in my world)

The reason I’m going to be using it is applying to what I’ve discussed before and that is applying personality to your web presence. Twitter is perfect for this. Just a quick recap in case you haven’t seen twitter it’s a “microblogging” platform. You’ve got 140 characters that you can update via web or text messaging and let
your ‘followers’ know what you are doing at this moment.

For companies who want to put out more personality this is great. Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos.com, who I met in LA at Underground® 4 is using Twitter in a big way. He’s got over 9,026 followers (that’s huge). Funny enough, I was buying new flip flops and on the thank you page at Zappos they had an invitation to follow Tony via Twitter. Check out Tony’s twitter profile at http://www.twitter.com/zappos

Notice the kinds of ‘tweets’ he puts out. Not too much to do with business but a whole lot to do with the personality of Zappos. It’s about solidifying the fact they truly live their values. Tony is such a big fan he’s even putup a page on Zappos dedicated to Twitter and getting started with it

http://twitter.zappos.com/start

If you go back and look at the history of Tony’s tweets they are a tiny amount that are promotional in nature.

I think this is taking blogging to the next level. I love my blog for the interactivity and the ability to transmit my personality across to readers creating that bond. With Twitter you can do this 140 characters at a time.
Try it and don’t forget to follow me for at http://www.twitter.com/josesotillo

I have to give credit to my friend John Reese to opening my eyes to the potential here on Twitter. Now as ‘big, bad marketers’ we are always looking at new ways to getting our message across, but Twitter is interesting because only your ‘followers’ will get your messages. So you cannot blatantly bombard your twitter contacts with pitches because they’ll stop following you (just like opting out)

What do you think?