Use Twitter to direct traffic to your websites. You can share information that is useful for prospective clients. You can also share information with employers to enhance your reputation. Use the 140 characters to generate curiosity and provide a link to your website.

Avoid Hard Selling

Don’t pursue hard-sell tactics. You should focus on building relationships. Take full advantage of Twitter and gather information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about your business.

You need to figure out what you can learn and what you can offer. From there you will generate contacts that will help you reach your goals.

During a recent thunderstorm, many Duke Energy customers reported their power outages via Twitter. In January of 2009 Duke Energy set up a Twitter account, @DukeEnergyStorm, to keep their customers up to date on power outage problems. Their primary mission was to broadcast outage information. Then last fall they hired Lisa Hoffmann to help manage their social media. She and other staffers do the tweeting during major storms. And they are monitoring the tweets people are sending to them.

Twitter postings are not hindered by power outages if the users are using smart phones or personal computers that run off of battery power. That allows Duke Energy customers the ability to keep up to date with power outage status without making unnecessary phone calls.

This is a classic example of how a customer service company gets time sensitive information to it’s customers. How do you use Twitter for customer service?