Why You Should Care About Twitter

Posted on | May 20, 2008 |

I arrived late to Twitter. I started tweeting after attending a BlogHer conference in April and noticing EVERYONE had their laptops open and twitter.com up. I set-up my account and started following a few acquaintances and suddenly I was sucked in. I tried to explain to my husband and close friends what the draw was to an endless stream of people I barely know’s stream of consciousness, but came up short in my rationale. It’s like trying to argue with someone about why they should like Gossip Girl. But after spending some time mulling over why Twitter matters to business I’ve come to the conclusion it’s really about accessibility and amplification.
Twitter turns your customers into friends and they broadcast to their followers about your business. See the comment to this Harvard Business Review article about Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Tony has 4K followers.
Do you know if you follow Tony on Twitter or send him a DM he answers you even if he hasn’t a clue who you are? When a CEO (or even his assistant) does this, it certainly goes very far in making you feel connected to the experience and keeping the buzz about the operation going. It doesn’t make you feel like there are layers of hierarchy or a sense of others being above to all those below.
After all, isn’t everyone a potential customer for shoes?

The Twitter effect makes me feel like I am buying from friends, not a big company. I follow Zappos folks from both the Vegas and Kentucky facilities and with each Tweet, not only am I entertained, but I also become a more loyal customer and most importantly, an advocate.
Even if you reject Twitter personally – you should know that it’s working for business – Last week BusinessWeek.com published Why Twitter Matters
and reveals “Hormel Foods (HRL) and Panasonic pore through millions of tweets, finding customers talking about their products. Dell (DELL), a Visible customer, scouts out the tweets and dispatches its Twittering workers to jump into the conversations. At a conference last week, the company claimed to have boosted sales through these efforts by $500,000 in recent months.”

Want to know what I’m doing? Follow me on Twitter - http://twitter.com/shefinds
Required reading before Tweeting:
Top Twitter Tips for Business

Online fashion expert, style and shopping expert, Michelle Madhok, is the CEO of White Cat Media LLC publisher of blogs SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com, sites that help busy women shop online.

Comments