Twitter could help your business fly, says Gartner

And that being the case, the analyst has highlighted four ways in which manufacturers are already using Twitter, and that, it believes, may yet catch on. As Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner, explains: "Despite the fact that Twitter is primarily aimed at users in the consumer market, many of those individuals work for companies and 'tweet' about business issues." That alone, he says, is reason enough to get Twitter usage by employees gong – covered by existing web participation guidelines. "As Twitter is a public forum, employees should understand the limits of what is acceptable and desirable. It is good practice to remind employees that the policies already in place apply to this new communication forum, as well." Gartner believes the value is in Twitter's short, 140 character posts (microblogs) – essentially quick thoughts, updates, news and ideas, (called 'tweets') under real-time broadcast. As for the four Twitter applications, the yare: direct, indirect, internal and signalling. Under the description 'direct', Mann makes the point that companies are increasingly establishing Twitter identities as part of their corporate communications – similar to corporate blogs. "They Tweet about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases or promotional web sites, and respond to other Twitterers' comments about the brand." Gartner maintains that this approach should be used with caution, simply because uninteresting or self-serving Tweets could hinder the brand image. Then for 'indirect' usage, Mann explains that employees are typically using Twitter to enhance their personal reputations and hence also their company's. "Good Twitterers enhance their personal reputation by saying clever, interesting things, attracting many followers who go on to read their blogs," he explains. "Some of this inevitably rubs off on their employers." Moving on to internal usage, this is about .employees using Twitter to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them. "In most cases, Gartner does not recommend using Twitter or any other consumer microblogging service in this way, because there is no guarantee of security," warns Mann. "It is crucial that employees understand the limitations of the platform and never discuss confidential matters. "A seemingly innocuous Tweet about going to see a particular client can tip off a competitor. Other providers, such as Yammer and Present.ly, provide Twitter-like functions targeted at enterprise microblogging, with more security and corporate control." Finally, for signalling, Mann suggests that Twitter streams can provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company. "Search tools, such as search.twitter.com or the twhirl application can scan for references to particular company or product names. Savvy companies use these signals to get early warnings of problems and collect feedback about product issues."