

Ask HN: How does Twitter help your company? - selcouth


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jrockway
The real-time search makes it easy to find people to lay off.

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colins_pride
I wonder if that's why twitter search is one of the few useful sites that my
big-company IT department doesn't block.

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auston
My favorite of company twitter usage is from Kogi
(<http://twitter.com/kogibbq>) - They use it to tell people where their Korean
BBQ Taco trucks are around L.A.

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silencio
I wish Alice (one of the people tweeting from that account) would stop
capitalizing random letters in her sentences. Otherwise I agree, I love how
they're using Twitter. It's really nice to see them update about delays and
issues.

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njharman
I work for the Austin American-Statesman news company in central Texas.

This is how our Internet Editor answered that question
[http://thequig.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/op-ed-how-the-
states...](http://thequig.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/op-ed-how-the-statesman-
uses-twitter/)

Here are the many twitter accounts our reporters use to distribute and collect
news and information
<http://www.statesman.com/news/content/standing/twitter.html>

The team I work for wrote a tool to aggregate/retweet tweets from our staff
and "widgets" to display them on various pages of our websites. This is mostly
used during major events such as SXSW, elections, or Longhorn Football games
as a fast way to collect and publish news and tidbits from our staff in the
field. And also, of course, to engage/serve the Twitter community with news
and information.

In general Twitter is a communications tool. If your business benefits from
communicating with its customers (not all do) then it can benefit from
Twitter.

But, like all things, it takes effort and can be done "wrong". It, like all
things, is not a silver bullet.

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Zev
Not really a company, but an open source project I contribute to (there's also
an App Store app, so it _might_ qualify as a company, I suppose) has a twitter
account that we use. We mostly have a few twitter searches for anyone having
problems with the app (Colloquy) or looking for an IRC client on a platform we
support to recommend to them _. Occasionally we'll give out promo codes,
either to bloggers or to anyone following us/twitter's public stream to use.

_ Note, for this, we don't use a bot — A. because traffic is low volume, only
a few tweets every few days and B. (imo), bots that send send the same message
to everyone regardless of what the query is, is obnoxious.

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callmeed
We've started posting announcements, conversation starters and small contests
on our company twitter account (I've been doing it on my personal account a
little longer).

It's still early, but I think it's a promising way to get the word out on
stuff and start conversations. When we release new site designs or app
features, it's another way (besides our blog) to get the word out.

Also, another strategy is to use the search feature and find people looking
for product recommendations (this happens more than you think).

Search is also good for finding people who are frustrated with your customer
service–or your competitor's.

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darwinw
I started to twitter a few weeks ago, and I was occasionaly posting links to
promote my content, but when I check my google analytics, i hardly see any
referal from twitter. So at the moment, i'm still unsure about how effective
twitter is to my business.

~~~
johns
A lot of people are using Twitter desktop or mobile clients which wouldn't
pass a referrer. Have your direct accesses gone up?

Also, just posting links to promote your stuff is a really ineffective way to
promote your stuff on Twitter. Twitter is about the conversations, not the
broadcasts. Engage in some meaningful conversations related to what you're
trying to promote and you'll see the benefits.

~~~
darwinw
You made a good point, I saw increase in direct acesses but I need to find
some ways to know that my effort spent on twitter produces that. Maybe url
shortener like bit.ly can help in that regards.

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axod
The search makes it easy to see when users are having issues with my webapp.

Of course that assumes Twitter is working itself at the time... which
sometimes it's not.

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selcouth
So I found this post on a new community site, and I'm honestly curious. I hear
that companies HAVE to use it, that it is a GREAT way to talk with your
clients and customers. But I've tried...and I don't get it.

You guys are a pretty tech savvy bunch - how do you use Twitter?

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zazzle1234
"Found?" Aren't you the co-founder of this Trogger thing? I feel astroturfed.

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selcouth
Eep, I am sorry for that. Yep, I am on of the founders of the site, but not
the writer of the post. I was working on the site when we made an announcement
about Trogger to some of our SFbeta attendees, and "found" that post from a
few days ago and saw it hadn't gotten many informative responses. Was hoping
people here could help me out - since I do twitter for our sfbeta event.

Sorry to leave you with some nasty scabs there. :(

~~~
zazzle1234
I think what you really wanted was to get people from HN on your site as a way
to get users and possibly buzz.

If all you wanted was to find out about how companies are using Twitter you
could have posted an "Ask HN" asking just that question.

If you want feedback about your startup you can post an "Ask HN" about that,
too, but don't go pretending that you weren't just playing for traffic.

~~~
selcouth
Actually, I didn't change the link (not sure how/who did, but that's fine) -
and didn't know I could post "Ask HN" posts. Now that I know, I will in the
future. (still not sure how to...but can figure it out now I know its
possible)

Looking at most everything in the new section, they all link to outside links,
so I thought that was required - like Digg. I restated the question here AND
linked, so I could get responses here without the need for people to follow
the link. Extra traffic to Trogger was a bonus, sure, but after SXSW and the
hype of Twitter that continues there, I was curious.

~~~
zazzle1234
Yeah, I didn't realize only admins could change links, so I apologize for
that.

Still, I'm not sure what your role at Trogger is, but if you're involved in
marketing or promotional stuff you should understand why I and the other
people who voted you down reacted the way we did.

Next time act in good faith. Ask the community directly and if you want to
post a link to your own startup don't pretend that you "found it" on "some
community site." Tell us up front that it's your startup and gosh HN is great
and we'd love your feedback, etc.

~~~
selcouth
Point definitely taken, and I will. I'll also definitely use the Ask HN
feature now that I know it exists, since that is what my goal with that one
was. I do think there is a really knowledgeable community here, that I'm
working to learn from as I start to get into this field.

