Twitter Monitoring for Business 101

I created an account on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and I have been on it sparingly since. First, I really didn't see what the big deal with Twitter was. Myspace and Facebook have a similar “status update” bar. After reading an article about how a pizza place attracted a customer using the Twitter, I decided to test what twitter can do for a business.

I created an account for my small food delivery business and using search.twitter.com started monitoring twits that are taking place in my targeted area. People twitted frequently and generously about their days past and plans ahead. I was specifically interested in keywords such as food, restaurant and picnics.

When someone tweets about how bored they are alone at home, how weather was bad and didn't want to go out I replied with restaurants suggestions or that we deliver food from different restaurants.

At first I was little nervous about conversing with strangers or interrupting peoples conversation with sales pitch. Surprisingly, people didn't seem to be annoyed at all. They were twitting back with me and checked out our website many times.

ChloeLaCroix@FoodOnBoard omg I've been there!!! I love their tacos ;)
BearDesignGroup@FoodOnBoard Thanks! Sweet Baby Ray's sounds good!
saravonsega@FoodOnBoard How much do you charge? What's your phone number?

Now, more confident, I uploaded emails of all our customers and checked if they had twitter account. Turns out that more than 50 people have twitter account. I followed them all and many of them followed me back. With few of them I had some conversation. I even asked their opinion on their last order. They replied with some great feedback.

I also searched people who are in our service area and started following them. After a few days of easy chats I have more than 100 people I monitor on Tweetdeck and about 30 people who follow my updates on tweeter.

What surprises me the most is that the same people who do not open printed or electronic ad from us are willing to converse or follow our updates on twitter, at least for now. The question is why people are more open to business offers on Tweeter and how long it will last.