Twit happens. – Jay Baer

Twitter is a social media outlet that many businesses find useful in reaching out to their markets. Twitter is an especially helpful tool for small businesses, in that tweeting is a low cost marketing technique that can yield high return for little time and effort. Small business owners can use Twitter to promote sales, to discuss corporate news and to engage with customers directly. You can tweet links to your webpage, or your Facebook page, or simply to Internet miscellanea you think your customers would find interesting.

Last year, Edison Research released a comprehensive survey on Twittering in America. As of April 2010, only seven percent of Americans were using Twitter on a monthly basis (though 87 percent had heard of it, just one percentage point behind Facebook). Though a small percentage of the total population, these Twitter-ers are a strong and vocal minority – especially in the realm of business. The same study showed that 49 percent of monthly Twitter users follow companies or brands; only 16 percent of all other social network users (like Facebook) follow, or are fans of, companies or brands. As Jay Baer of Convince & Convert surmised: “Combined with their above average income and above average education, Twitter users’ propensity to interact with brands make them a huge potential source.”

Sounds pretty good, right?

As with anything that seems too good to be very true, Twitter usage in business comes with a few words of caution. The very nature of Twitter, quickly disseminated public messages from established persons (or personas), means that mistakes – from typos to major social taboos – are said, and set, and re-said over and over. It seems to be a natural rule of Twitter: the bigger the corporate boo-boo, the more quickly it spreads. (And given the 140-character limit on tweets, any typos might really look like a nifty space-saving device.)

If you’ve chosen to use Twitter in corporate communications, you have quite a few choices as to who will be sending out tweets. You can tweet from your own Twitter account, or have someone else send tweets from a general corporate account. Or you can have multiple voices, i.e. Twitter accounts, for your business. The idea, of course, is that whoever is in charge of sending corporate tweets must follow the same standards that you uphold in other corporate communications. This includes tone, philosophy, persona and approaches to customer service.

Mistakes on Twitter do happen, as the aforementioned Jay Baer highlighted recently, but like other corporate snafus, they can be managed with grace and style. Only with Twitter, you’ll have to do it in 140 characters or less.

For more on corporate Twittering, take a look at this Business Week online article that surveyed a few leading CEOs, and how they use Twitter to help their businesses.

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Think social media and how we interact with it doesn't affect your business.  Think again.  Now, more than ever, technology impacts how we hire, fire, act and think. 

Consider the following:

• Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, im-ing provide people with 'headlines" of information.  This impacts not only how we convey information, but also how your employees and customers are influenced.
  
• Your hiring has changed - Craigslist is now the largest job board on earth.  And think about how the new normal means reference checking includes googling job candidates.
  
• Everyone is an author.  And their musings never go out of publication.  Rightly or wrongly when your employees post something on Facebook, your prospective customers and suppliers may take offense.
• Your customers have greater choices in how to communicate with you.  Understanding their preferences (email, phone, live, chat or traditional mail, to name a few) is important as the best product or solution won't sell without the appropriate communication vehicle.
  
• Your appropriate company asset usage information now must include policies on data, information and electronic devices - including cell phones, email, laptops and the web.

Perhaps the greatest area of impact is managing staff.  Ensure your managers know proper e-Etiquette.  Recently a colleague of mine, Matthew Grabell of Employee Relations Solutions sent the following word to the wise out about Textual Harassment"

"Yes, that's right.... Because cell phone texts leave a physical trail which can be retrieved as evidence, cases are no longer simply 'he said, she said.'  In a recent case in Michigan, the defendant denied that he sexually harassed the plaintiff via inappropriate text messages stating that they never happened and the plaintiff was making it up.  A forensic expert retrieved the deleted messages from plaintiff's cell phone and the case settled before litigation was filed for $450,000!!!"

What does it all mean - be aware.  The ubiquity of digital and electronic devices, and ability to share information quickly and succinctly can be a tremendously effective way to share and receive information, but it also means companies must make sure that all of their workplace policies include data and devices, especially if the employer provides or pays for the service and the device.