20 Ways twitter Helps Businesses Beat The Economic Downturn

On Monday March 16 we started a discussion with groups on LinkedIn, "Reasons why twitter might be right for your business" and after receiving over 120 comments back we've distilled the strongest themes into 20 simple points on how companies are gaining an advantage by using twitter. It is true some companies are still getting familiar with this new tool and see it as a time consuming and there can be an overload of non-valuable information but over 80% of comments we received indicated the pro's far outweighing the con's.

What we were delighted to see is that although twitter is strong in news and social interaction, it is playing a fundamental role in giving a number of companies a competitive edge during challenging economic times by:

- creating access to new customers
- receiving customer and public feedback that leads to more successful sales
- opening networking opportunities with contacts companies wouldn't have had access to.

20 of LinkedIn's Strongest Group Discussion Themes from over 120 Comments

Following are the strongest themes many companies said they're enjoying as they've learned how to grasp the culture, grow their followers, and when needed apply external technology tools that simplifies the vast amounts of information.

Here's how companies have benefited from twitter:

1.  Build relationships with people they would have not met before

2.   Exposure to lots of new business thoughts, technical ideas and leadership styles

3.   Finding new clients by commenting back on others’ tweets

4.   Access to thinkers and doer’s one wouldn’t normally interact with

5.   Can follow businesses you want the latest updates from with less effort

6.   Clients have asked for accounts to be opened so they can get regular updates

7.   Can assist Google rankings, sometimes it gets first page results

8.   Can assist in getting real questions answered real time during the day

9.   Been a great way to gain interactive access with new clients by following their tweets

10.   Received access to publicity: radio, TV, press, speaking engagements

11.   Allows leaders to connect to followers on a personal level

12.   Without being pushy, it can generate buzz/talk about your company

13.   Great for bringing traffic to your site if you offer truly valuable information and links

14.   Provides a premier marketing tool when used correctly

15.   Can be a great resource for getting push information versus searching the web

16.   Can act as a news wire for journalist who are looking for story content

17.   Can save time by getting the latest news without having to go search for it

18.    Enables expansion of your database by removing budget or geography barriers  

19.   It can increase your market reach if you actively promote your presence on twitter

20.   A great way to showcase your expertise and differentiate from competition.

This blog's finding will be posted on LinkedIn again and we look forward to providing feedback on the new learning, experiences, benefits and challenges twitter brings companies during one of the greatest periods of economic, social and technology changes in history.

Feel free to comment below if you have any thoughts you would like to share with other readers on this blog.

Comments

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[mkb123]

I have received more deal flow from social networking sites like twitter & Linkedin than going to networking meetings.

[Lara Cawthra]

Great info. I have already connected with others in my field I would otherwise not have met. Great for sharing new ideas, and for hearing the negative side of your business. By hearing the negative you can quickly respond before problems are created

[Delfin]

I liked so much the straight-to-the-benefit mood of your summary. Great job and see you there Twitting!

[Zee Visram]

A very perceptive and probing starting question. Outstanding endeavour to pull together the 120 discussions into 20 succint & useable benefits/ideas. Thank you so much for these 20 idea generators. A really good follow up would be how these noteworthy benefits were actually achieved. We know Twitter was the media but what did they do (steps) to get the results they got? Some examples would be very useful to illuminate the various uses of Twitter.

[Fundamentals]

Really useful thank you. we have had a couple of instances where PR via Twitter and clients using Twitter have directed in direct sales queries and ultimately new business.

[Gemma Went]

Great post, will help in a meeting I have today actually!

[Paula Dauncey]

I'm a firm believer in Twitter, good summary of the benefits, I've experienced so many of these.

[Priyanka D]

This are some really cool points! Good article

[Steve Dodd]

Great summary!!! A lot of people will benefit from this!

[Karen Stinchfield]

Thanks for the information, I have been working on building my twitter network for the past couple of weeks and it's good to hear my efforts may pay off.