The world is tweeting and, from a PR point of view, so should you… Ashton Kutcher has recently become the first person to get one million followers on Twitter, or ‘Tweetmillionaire’. Let’s be honest: we don’t expect our Tweets to receive as much attention as Kutchers. A- Because we are not celebrity actors and B- We aren’t married to Demi Moore.
However, from a business point of view, Tweeting definitely will help you:
-Establish valuable relationships with other tweeters.
-Attract the attention of possible partners and customers.
-Improve your customer service, responding quickly to any issues that might be affecting your industry or/and your company.
-Add valuable links to your blog and website that will help your search engine rankings.
Domino’s Pizza recent PR disaster is the best example of why businesses can’t just ignore Twitter and other online networking sites. Millions of viewers watched the You Tube video where an employee goes about his daily job at Domino’s in a particularly unsanitary manner. Domino’s decided to take the quiet route to weather the PR storm: dealing only with concerned (and disgusted) consumers. However, at that stage, the debate had already reached Twitter and other online forums. And Domino’s was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, Domino’s was forced to act and put an end to the spiralling debate (after millions had already watched one of its employees sticking cheese up his nose). The company finally opened a Twitter account and issued a public apology to all its customers. A warning sign to other businesses: online forums are worth joining in, at the very least just to know what others are saying about you…