This month I’m going to be tweeting about Twitter. What it is, why you should care, and most importantly how you can use it in your business
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have most likely been bombarded with mentions of Twitter in the media
Even members of congress were “busted” tweeting during President Obama’s recent national address http://tinyurl.com/dc394j
Briefly, Twitter is a “microblogging” tool (and now a technical infrastructure) that lets people post short 140 character tweets to the web
Twitter is a weird FrankenTech that exists somewhere in the spaces between RSS, chat, e-mail (albeit public email), blogs, and forums
Once you post your “tweet” to the Twittersphere, users that are “following” you will be updated with the pearl of wisdom you just posted
I admit, at first I didn’t “get” Twitter. It seemed like a pointless social-media distraction. I’m rapidly and drastically changing my mind
The best way to really understand Twitter is to sign up for it and start playing with it. Go to twitter.com and create a twitter account
Make sure you take the time to create a customized and branded profile. Include a link to your e-commerce or dealership website
Be warned going in, Twitter goes down a lot. Just Google “Twitter is down”. It happens so much, it’s *almost* become an endearing quality
Check out Twitter’s help site help.twitter.com to really understand all that you can do with it. As always, if you’re stuck, RTFM! 
Posting to, and managing followers is an excellent task for your Community Relationship Manager!
Publicize your dealership’s twitter ID and encourage people that visit your shop or your site to sign up for twitter and to follow you
Put your twitter ID on your printed receipts, on your business cards, add a “Follow Us” link to your website and in your e-mail marketing
You need to understand some of the tools and technique of the twitter “language.” First, a tweet is the name for a twitter post
Next, you will see the @ symbol in tweets. This is a way for directly referencing or replying to another twitter user. Mine is @radicalpower
Another symbol you will see is #. It’s an unofficial trick that has evolved among twitter users to tag or categorize post content #ecommerce
Another convention you will see is RT for Re-Tweet. When you read something really interesting that deserves wider distribution you RT it
Here’s how it looks together: RT @radicalpower- I’m writing a great article for #Dealernews on how to use #twitter for motorcycle dealers
Twitter has really become more of a technical infrastructure. To get the most out of it you’ll want to use some of the twitter clients
Two of the most widely used and recommended twitter clients are www.twhirl.org and www.tweetdeck.com. Try them out for yourself and use one
There are some cool applications that tap into twitter so people can analyze the real-time twit-stream to see what the world is thinking
Check out Twist twist.flaptor.com to track trends or keywords and Twitscoop www.twitscoop.com to see what terms are waxing or waning
There’s even an easy to use tool, twitpic twitpic.com that lets you post pictures through twitter.
Because you only have 140 characters, it’s hard to enter long urls when you want to direct people to a certain site or page
The solution to this is to use a URL-shortening service. Tinyurl.com is the most popular but there are hundreds more See: tinyurl.com/yp8cba
A user-generated directory has popped at wefollow.com. You simply tweet to @wefollow with 3 #category to get listed
So the big question you have to be asking is, OK this is all very interesting, but how can I use this to make more money in my shop?
On the e-commerce side, you can tweet to all your followers when you add new, cool products to your website. That will drive traffic & sales
You can also run RT-based contests. Tell people that if they re-tweet a product detail page, or blog post they have a chance to win a prize
Follow this link http://tinyurl.com/cg8euq for a Google search on “retweet contests” to see some ideas of what others are doing
You can publicize web discounts or in-store specials that are good with a code that you tweet. This gives people motivation to follow you.
Build a social media ecosystem with twitter that points people to your blog posts, and a blog link that points people to your twitter ID
When people follow you, or RT you, make sure you thank them via a Direct Message or publicly via an @reply. Don’t forget to follow them back
You will want to make sure that you do frequent searches on twitter for you company name to keep track of what people are saying about you
I hope you found this series of tweets on Twitter informative and I invite you to follow me on twitter @radicalpower
And yes, each of the points above were under 140 characters!
Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, marketing, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, pr, Search Engine Optimization, selling-online, social marketing, social media, social-networking, Twitter
In all my years of writing about “all things web” (granted weighted heavily toward e-commerce) for the motorcycle and powersports industry, nothing has seemed to reach the same level of resonance as my idea that developing a dedicated, full-time community management position was a brilliant thing to do.
When I was running marketing for the dealership that I work with, I had put on a few really successful open-house events. The “light bulb” moment came when I said: “we need to do stuff like this every month!”
That required someone dedicated to coming up with the ideas, handling all the logistics, etc. But I then saw this role as much more than just an “event” person. We need to do more community stuff. Community stuff takes a lot of time. I need a full-time person to do it. Bingo! It was that simple.
I also wanted them to start being the “face” of the company on all our our online social networking activities. That led to me climbing up the abstraction ladder to call the position community relationship manager.
In short, this position is THE public and personal face of the company.
I just came across a post on ReadWriteWeb that deals with the same idea. Their article is obviously written from a more theoretical framework, while my take on it is much more the result of pragmatic, hands-on needs.
Marshall asks the questions “Do Startup Companies Need A Community Manager?” My answer is of course a resounding “YES”. However, like pretty much everything else it all comes down to the ability to execute on the idea.
It’s not PR!
PR is dead. The two-faced, B.S. spewing PR flacks that have made their money by coming up with ever more creative methods to lie to a company’s customer are going to die a loud and long overdue death.
PR was a one-sided shouting match. The new age of community is more about listening than talking. One thing that most PR people seem to have is a genetic aversion letting anyone else talk or listening to them when they do.
No one with ANY hint of PR on their resume should come anywhere near a community relationship position!
But what about all those functions that PR serves? Like minimizing damage when the company does something stupid or bad? Or “spinning” one result to be seen as something totally different?
Oh, I don’t know… How about not doing things like putting poison in kid’s toys, or letting poison food get produced in the first place or simply telling the truth?
Naive? Probably.
The direction that the world is going to force you to go? Absolutely!
Might as well start recognizing that you’ve got a transparent kimono on. Open it up… Or don’t… Don’t matter because people are going to know what’s going on anyway. You might want to see how the truth works for a change.
It’s not Marketing!
Marketing still has a valuable place when it comes to developing the identity and the initial message. But marketing is going to need to become much more participatory and reactive to the reality being dictated by the real world.
It must be legitimate!
Don’t lie. If you have a position that the market doesn’t seem to like, then explain in truthful detail why you did what you did, do what you do, or are going to continue to do what you did. Even people that hate you will at least respect you. How is that a downside? And who knows, maybe being honest may actually turn some people onto you. After years and years of BS, maybe legitimacy and honesty are worth giving a try?
It may be a game changer!
This has the potential to be one of those paradigm changing ideas that fundamentally changes the way companies communicate with their customers.
Customers don’t want to listen to PR B.S. and they sure as hell don’t believe anything that comes out of a marketing or advertising department.
There are of course risks. The old model of how PR/Marketing crafted and controlled a focused message or identity is over. In reality the only messages or identities that really mattered were the ones that the customers created for themselves and communicated to each other.
In the past it was obviously easier for a large company to force conformity to the desired message, but as the number of communication channels is now nearly infinite, there’s no way any company is going to be able to effectively control their message or ID.
Companies must sooner or later respond to the fact that the key to their company’s long term survival is the active and honest communication and participation with the market. And in non-economic terms, what’s a market if not a community?
This is going to totally shake up so many business practices! From product development, to accounting, to of course sales and marketing.
It’s going to bring about the need for greater transparency. Worn-out corporate double-speak is dead. The old guard PR industry is going to die (no doubt kicking and screaming about “losing control”).
It’s time for companies of all sizes to realize that they have already lost, or very shortly will loose, control over their true image.
So it’s time now to start crafting plans and organizations that can communicate and participate openly and truthfully with the market. That starts with the Community Relationship position.
If you really want to take this on and understand it, you need to closely read Groundswell. It will articulate in detail pretty much everything I’m talking about. But with better writing and more footnotes. 
Tags:community-marketing, community-relationship-management, marketing, pr, relationship
