Does Twitter matter for business?

Yes. My business is only 15 months old and we have gone from zero to known well across my little space of the ITSM industry. How did we do it? Social Media. We did it so well we are now outsourcing SM for other orgs. The biggest problem I see for SM ad New Media and business is the outrageous abuse that business do to SM. It doesn't take that much to see how successful orgs are doing social and copy it, creating yet another spam channel will help no one, and HURT a business. I tell people now, you can use SM for your business but you are better off to take a class before you start.

Chris

I see it used a lot, although I am not sure it helps individuals ( I own a small consulting bsuiness). I do believe it does help in promoting products and services of small businesses such as retailers, restaurants, and other entertainment entities

In the ERP space, Twitter is becoming the coffee stand outside the industry conference sessions, a place where we can share a quick point of view, react to the situation or even reference a more meaningful conversation (perhaps like this one). I think the larger question in our industry is whether and how we can engage customers via twitter...and what does that look like? Twitter has changed customer service for some consumer brands...will that happen in B2B too?

Andrew, that's the big Social CRM question --- how to engage customers and measure the results using social media. Next up: Discussions about Holy Grails of various sorts!

Recently I read an article in Telegraph where the author talks about his experience of customer service he obtained from Mahindra & Mahindra (one of premier auto firm in India) by twitting to its chairman. Guess that is a pretty good use of twitter for business?

Link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/deannelson/100047345/i-never-thought-id-say...

Joseph

We find Twitter (among other social media) super useful for helping to create content and ideas, as well as keeping up with new releases in the industry, industry news etc. Here's an article on Social Media and Business Intelligence - http://bit.ly/aONruG - you might be interested in as it talks about using social networks to help achieve better personal and business visibility,and debates whether we can use this information to add value to our organization.

I agree with Kevin......I see it used a lot & it's become the "thing" to have if you have a business. I have an SEO marketing company working for me to bring me up in the rankings on Google, Yahoo, etc--they claim Twitter will help me in that respect. And it probably has; but as far as bringing me actual customers & profits--no, it hasn't helped. Will it in the future--let's hope so!

YES! WorkingPoint uses it for all of our communications, we only have a phone line for the fax machine. We use for group chats, calls, meetings, screen sharing, file sending, everything! We would not be able to function as a company without it!

I personally use it purely for networking. From the networking groups I am a member of I talk to other members through Twitter. Most of the time it is normal conversations that would be done over a cup of coffee in person. Keeping it informal means I have been able to build up proper relationships with people. This has meant a few referrals have come my way via Twitter.

I have send out the odd article link via twitter and then measure the click through rate on those.