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Thu Mar 20, 2008

by Mack Collier

If you aren't, you should be!  With close to one million Twitter users (according to TwitDir),
businesses are beginning to realize that it's just as important to
monitor what members on Twitter are saying about them, as it is to monitor
the blogosphere.

Thankfully, there's a painfully easy way to keep tabs on what others are saying about you on Twitter.  Tweetscan is a neat site that searches for recent references to whatever search term you choose.  You can search for a business name, or if you are already on Twitter, you can search for @yourtwittername to see who has been replying to you recently.  The service works so well that in my experience, Tweetscan catches some replies that the web version of Twitter misses!

Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell recently set up a Society for Word of Mouth social network with Ning, and Jackie blogged about how she's using Tweetscan to keep track of who is talking about the new project.  Huba adds via Twitter:

Following Huba's advice, I have an RSS feed of Tweetscan searches for my name, and my Twitter username as well.  I keep up with both in Bloglines.  When you do a search on Tweetscan, if you want to subscribe to that search, just click on 'RSS' at the top right of the screen, and pick your feed reader from the list.

The Tweetscan/Twitter combo gives you a powerful customer service tool.  With Tweetscan you can quickly be notified if someone has a complaint about your business and/or its services, and you can quickly reach out to that someone to hopefully solve their problems.

Case in point, a few months ago I started using the Twitter client Twhirl.  One day I tried to sign-onto Twitter with Twhirl, and Twhirl said it didn't recognize my password, and wouldn't let me sign-on.  Frustrated, I posted on Twitter that I couldn't get Twhirl to work, and that I was going to download and try Snitter (a competing service to Twhirl), instead.  Almost instantly, someone from Twhirl contacted me via Twitter, and walked me through the process to get Twhirl working for me again.  I have used Twhirl ever since.

If you aren't monitoring Twitter via Tweetscan, you really should be.  As Twitter continues to grow, that only means there will be more conversations taking place on the service.  And some of them might even be about your business.  Can you afford not to listen?

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