June 15, 2009 by Barry Hurd

Too many professionals jump on Twitter and then accordingly stop using the service based on one thing from my perspective: a lack of understanding.

It is not that Twitter is the “ultimate tool” , “PR Killer” or anything like that. Twitter is pretty useful: if and only if you can wrap your brain around new ways of communicating with your audience. If you are planning to use Twitter for professional purposes, you need to have an established target when you join a conversation.

If we draw a comparison: imagine for a second that you just entered a masquerade party where everyone is talking another language, are all wearing disguises, and have many predefined motifs. It would be pretty scary to be the new person with no understanding.

How do you create a target audience at a masquerade? You remove the masks.

In the real world, you would watch mannerisms and listen to conversations.

Twitter (like many other social platforms) has a huge benefit that is often ignored: there are dozens of applications that allow you to see what is underneath the “here and now”, allowing you to attach historical significance, trending, and personal data to thousands of masked conversations.

STEP ONE: How to begin, using Twitter Search.

If you just type a search term into Twitter you will likely get a fire hose of somewhat irrelevant information sprayed at you. The following list of search operators is directly from Twitter (unfortunately, such unsexy things as search operators are never properly advertised on a search tool)

I highly suggest you take thirty seconds and browse the operators below. Using them on Twitter will GREATLY increase your understanding of what people are talking about.You can also use the advanced Twitter search to construct searches using these queries.

STEP TWO: Visualize the information
Once you have have developed an understanding of the basic search functionality of Twitter you can then move on to using dozens of applications that present the information with different metrics and visualizations applied to them. Many users of Twitter browse the basic interface and think “so what?”, completely oblivious to the various tools that can provide rich and detailed information about why, when, where, who and what the conversation is about.

Mailana -provides a breakdown of conversations and networks based on reciprocal tweets. It also offers suggested people to follow, tag clouds on conversations, local twitter users, and additional people talking on subject matter.

Twitter Browser – allows you to see a social network of Twitter users by first looking at one account. While there is no hard data on the users, it provides a simple way of seeing multiple social connections in an easy interface.

TweetStats – do you want to know how often a person tweets or when? This is a very useful tool for knowing when specific members of your core audience are active.

TweetVolume - compare the volume of times five different terms have been mentioned on Twitter. Highly useful for knowing what conversations produce enough traffic (and a very simple, no frill interface)

Twellow – it is a simple, robust, people directory. Everyone joining Twitter needs to know who else is talking.

If you have a moment, take the time to browse all of the tools above BEFORE trying to establish a business strategy around Twitter. Knowing the conversational marketplace and the existing networks before devoting all your time and energy will maximize your success.

Small Business Marketing Toolkits
Small Business Marketing Consulting for Seattle, Bellevue and the World
Local Search, Business Profiles, SEO, Keyword Research and Social Media