Using Twitter to Monitor the Brand

One analogy that can be made about Twitter is of being at a party; a party with hundreds of millions of people in the same room. Okay, it stretches the imagination a little but give it a moment.

Just like a real party you will find that the people attending have a tendancy to gather together into groups that find their mutual conversation interesting or have something in common. Now that's not dissimilar to Following a person on Twitter; I get to hear everything that they say (if I'm listening, that is!).

Let's take this one step further: If everyone is talking ("Tweeting") at the party it should be possible for me to filter the background noise and pick out words and phrases that people say that interests me. And this is where it suddenly becomes very rewarding indeed, not least from a business point of view.

The first tool that you need to become familiar with is the Twitter Search. Log into Twitter and you'll see it at the top. By typing in a word or words that relates to your product or service you'll see a list of people that have spoken about it recently. What they have said will depend upon what action you take.

To take an example, let's say you sell wedding cakes. Doing a search for "wedding cake" (we put the quotation marks in to ensure we get results for those two exact words in that order) may show up some people tweeting about the fact that they don't know how much one might cost. Here you could step in, reply to their tweet and advise them. Don't just sell to them (you're at a party, remember!) but instead be helpful and informative. Remember everything that you tweet can be heard by other people too!

Once you've mastered doing the searches you might want to download a tool like TweetDeck. We at Emerging Innovations Ltd have this running constantly and we have it set to alert us to anybody mentioning the web products and services that we specialise in. Then we join in the conversation.

You can also, of course, monitor the mention of your name, brand or area of the country. It all makes the world a easier place in which to do business.

Good luck in the twittersphere and we hope the above tips help you develop your business further.

David McLeary, Web Consultant