Can Twitter Really Help Your Business?

Excerpts from a recent AOL Board of Directors article I contributed to.

Love it or hate it — Twitter appears here to stay. The popular social networking and microblogging platform, which now boasts more than 100 million users, has become a favorite among celebrities, Justin Bieber fans, even the Dalai Lama (417,000 followers and counting!).

But many businesses are discovering that the rapid-fire medium can be a great way to connect with customers, promote new products and special offers, respond to complaints, and track what people are saying about them — and the competition.

In fact, the San Francisco startup founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone, is increasingly pushing the business applications of its platform, as the tech world continues to question how it will actually make money. “Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers,” reads the Twitter 101 for Business guide on Twitter.com. “As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company.”

(For those of you who don’t know an “RT” from a “DM” — Twitter allows users to post messages up to 140 characters from their computers or phones, which are then displayed on their profile pages and sent out to their subscribers, or “followers.”)

As you would imagine, the Twittershphere is littered with a lot of mindless chatter, which is one of the primary knocks against it. To tweet is easy. To tweet well is a whole other story. And it’s a question many entrepreneurs are grappling with today.

So is Twitter really worth your time and effort? Can it actually help boost the bottom line? Between them, the members of our Board of Directors have nearly 1 million followers — so they must be doing something right. We asked them to share their thoughts on all things Twitter.

Rob Adams

Director, Global Moot Corp Program at the University of Texas

“To me, Twitter is like visiting your favorite bar and catching up with your friends, only you can do it from your desk whenever you want to. I think this is a good corollary for how business gets done on Twitter too. Would you buy a car or insurance from one of your social friends? Kind of doubtful as a sustainable strategy — little bit of business bantering works, but try to scale it or turn it into a ‘marketing program’ and you won’t have many friends to catch up with.”