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Are You Tweeted Out Yet?

J. Lee Lehman

Part of a series. Read the rest of the series here.

I suppose you don't remember a year ago when only young people had Twitter sites. And a year or two before that, only young people had blogs. Now, the headlines surrounding Michael Jackson include reporting on how many tweets involved his name – and of course, Twitter was the headline on the protests in Iran as well.

Do you need a Twitter site? And if you have one, what do you want to do with it?

If you are in business, you definitely don't need a Twitter site to do a running log of every cup of coffee you make. For one thing, it's always worth remembering that anything you say on the web, you may still be explaining twenty years from now. But that doen't mean that Twitter isn't a good idea.

What is Twitter for a business? To use still more techie jargon, Twitter is like a personal RSS feed. Say what? Every time your business has a new product or service, you want people to know about it. Many businesses simply don't have time to put out a press release on everything they do – but Twitter can do that for you.

But that's the easy part. Because for this to be anything but a monumental waste of time, your Twitter feed has to be more interesting than reading the telephone book. How do you do that?

Perhaps the simplest way to do that is to intersperse your mini press releases (which you really do want to have) with useful information for people – preferably about something related to your business. Then, people will subscribe for the tip, but get your message as well.

But please – a suggestion from someone who admits to being pretty “out there” politically – avoid political comments if your Twitter is for a business. Really. As a web programmer, I really can be of use for somebody who may not agree with me politically. That's not to say I would accept a job for a site where I disagreed with the product – but political agreement is not always necessary in business. Inserting it potentially removes prospective clients.