During a recent conversation with one of my clients, he raised these concerns and asked me if I thought Twitter was just an “overhyped trend” that would soon disappear. “Why is it,” he asked, “that so many businesses have had poor results using Twitter to promote their products or services?”

In my opinion, the majority of these negative articles reveal either poor practices, a gross misunderstanding of the purpose of social media, or both. One may as well write an article about the fundamental flaws of a hammer when used to brush one’s hair. You’re either using the tool incorrectly, or for the wrong purpose!

Twitter Facilitates Meaningful Relationships

In short, Twitter was developed with the simple purpose of building relationships. It is NOT a platform from which to repeatedly broadcast your products or services, announce your latest sale, or drive traffic to your website.

[Please re-read the paragraph above.]

It IS, however, a simple and effective tool to facilitate legitimate, meaningful, two-way communication.

The businesses and individuals who understand this basic premise are experiencing tremendous success in building their brand, reputation, and interaction with their readers. Those who are truly using social media to build relationships with their audience are discovering its incredible (and relatively untapped) power to supercharge their businesses.

Oh, and those same folks rarely, if ever, promote their own products or services outside the context of a conversation. Instead, they ask questions, solicit input from their readers, respond to customer problems in real-time, and share only relevant information — often from other sources outside of their own offerings.

Thankfully, the good folks at Twitter have just released a brand new tool for businesses seeking to make the most of Twitter (and other social media) to connect with their audience. In addition to a “Twitter 101″ primer on the basics, this microsite also includes pages of case studies and best practices for businesses. A brief excerpt follows:

How to measure the value of Twitter

Before you set up measurement tools, focus on the quality of your engagement, and use your gut to check how things are going. How’s the feedback and interaction with your followers? Are you responding to most or your @messages? Are most tweets about you positive? Or if they started out largely negative, are they coming around? Are more people beginning to engage with you and mention your company?

Next, think about quantifying your experience. Although it can be tricky to add up the value of relationships, Twitter does lend itself to measurement in a few ways, especially if you’ve already defined what you hope will be different for your company in three months, six months or a year if you succeed on Twitter. Tactics like these can then help you assess your progress in meeting that goal:

• Keep a tally of questions answered, customer problems resolved and positive exchanges held on Twitter. Do the percentages change over time?
• When you offer deals via Twitter, use a unique coupon code so that you can tell how many people take you up on that Twitter-based promotion. If you have an online presence, you can also set up a landing page for a promotion, to track not only click-throughs but further behavior and conversions.
• Use third-party tools to figure out how much traffic your websites are receiving from Twitter.
• Track click-throughs on any link you post in a tweet. Some URL shortening services let you track click-throughs.

Check out the Twitter 101 for Business microsite for more information, helpful tips and resources, and inspiring case studies…

Visit the Twitter 101 for Business Site

http://tinyurl.com/5u75pe