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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. :(
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.
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.
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.
