Tweets can be a useful way of managing your online reputation, as well as minimizing damage during a crisis.
There’s been a lot of buzz (or should I say chirps?) on The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal’s Small Business sections about using twitter to expand sales and marketing efforts.
All of the articles emphasize that Twitter can, to quote the Times, “shorten the emotional distance between businesses and their customers.” Many small businesses are hiring out the project or hiring consultants to train them. Of the two, the latter option seems more viable in the long run as it is really the owner/employees who need to be making that connection with their customers.
I think what’s most important to corporate housing providers is that Twitter can minimize the damage during a crisis. So if, say, there’s damage to the water main of an apartment complex where you have several units or more, you can connect with all of the residents at once through the use of Twitter. You can also monitor what’s being said about your business and respond to the individual tweets. For now, this can be very time consuming for business owners to do, however, all of this could change shortly Twitter is developing business apps that can streamline the process and make it more efficient, and the products should be out shortly.