Tweeting while we work in London
Jinfo Blog

21st March 2010

By Penny Crossland

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Tweeting for business was a topic for discussion on both sides of the pond last week. While Nancy Davis Kho attended the SIIA lunch in New York and listened to speakers talking about using Twitter for business (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28216), I was a member of the audience at SLA Europe’s (http://www.sla-europe.org/) informative event in London entitled ‘Tweeting while we work’. Three social media experts, Dr Hazel Hall (@hazelh) of Napier University in Edinburgh, Julie Hall (@juliehall) of Women Unlimited and Julie Lewis (@judithlewis) of Seshet Consulting spoke on the usefulness of Twitter as a business information tool. Most of us were familiar with how corporations such as Dell and Daimler have used Twitter effectively to boost their brand image, now we wanted to hear about how information professionals could benefit from using Twitter for their work. Bob De Laney, News & Business Director at Lexis Nexis, who chaired the event, pointed out that while the company monitors social networking sites as a matter of course, it was hard to know how to incorporate Twitter into their content. Hazel Hall, the Director of the Centre for Social Informatics at Napier University maintained that articles in the press commenting on Stephen Fry’s more than 1 million followers made it hard to persuade professionals that Twitter is a valuable business tool. In her presentation, 10 Twitter Tips in 10 minutes (http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~hazelh/esis/Hazel_SLA_March_10.ppt), Dr Hall pointed out that Twitter had elements of social networking, instant messaging, wikis and blogging, which, combined with elements of conversation made it a business information tool that could help in reformulating problems and validating research. Tweeting has become a valuable medium for PR & marketing firms – these types of businesses are rarely Twitter followers –while many academics do not engage in tweeting, but are keen to follow others in order to learn. Business information professionals meanwhile should add Twitter to their search strategies, since the tool has become a valuable competitive intelligence resource. At this point I learned a new term: ‘twin forming’ – the twitter version of providing information. Entrepreneur Julie Hall values Twitter for its ability to connect people in real-time and people who would never have met otherwise. Twitter is particularly valuable to small businesses, which should use it as a relationship management tool. Used correctly, it can improve customer relations and build brands. Judith Lewis, an expert on search marketing solutions spoke about how to use Twitter for online reputation management, by creating feeds that monitor what others are saying about you. Her overriding advice to businesses on Twitter: treat every compliment like a complaint: always respond to a tweeter, whether the comments are good or bad. And how many hours a day do the panellists spend on tweeting, following or searching Twitter? The answer is between 1 and 1.5 hours a day – a time investment not every member of the audience was prepared to commit to. Interestingly, at the end of the session, Bob De Laney asked a telling question of the panellists: would they pay to use Twitter? The answer was a resounding ‘Yes’.

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