1. Do your research before engaging customers: Know how your customers use Twitter. It takes only a minute to go to Twitter Search and find out if there are any conversations happening about your brand, product, service or industry. Know what your customers are saying about you.
2. Determine organizational goals: Not all brands utilize Twitter in the same way. Some, like @ComcastCares, use Twitter to provide customers with support. Other branded Twitter accounts, such as @DellOutlet, have utilized the service to sell products. It’s important to think about what you are trying to achieve using Twitter before devoting your time and resources to it. You’re likely to get more out of it that way.
3. Utilize either a branded or personal profile: You have two options: you can either use a branded profile with your company’s logo, or you can opt to create a more personal profile that unites your own personal brand with that of the company. Branded profiles are great for certain things – for example, industry news, contests, investor relations, etc. Personal profiles are more beneficial if your organization wants to leverage the employee’s personal micro-community or wants to have a more human presence.
4. Build your Twitter equity and credibility: To be a successful brand on Twitter, you have to build credibility and equity. It’s about developing a reputation as a trusted source of information or being seen as an expert in a particular subject. You won’t succeed in building your Twitter equity by pushing out one way marketing messages about your product. Instead ask questions, be personal, and engage people naturally within the Twitter community. Otherwise, customers won’t listen to what you have to say. A good suggestion is following the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of my tweets are conversational and personal, 20 percent are about the company I work for. I’ve found that this has really helped build customer engagement and link click-through rates.
5. Track metrics and conversation trends: Any enterprise or medium sized business should invest in a paid tracking service like Radian6 or Nielsen to better track Twitter conversations, identify trends, measure sentiment, and to get a quantifiable picture of what is going on in the social web. Don’t forget to track how much money Twitter has saved your brand. How many issues did you solve, leads did you create, and dollars did you save through Twitter engagement versus traditional resources? If your goal is to handle customer support issues via Twitter, it’s wise to check if there is any decrease in the call volume to your support center. And if you are selling products via Twitter (as Dell is doing), you should of course measure your sales via that channel.
6. Don’t go overboard; less structure the better: Your Twitter use can appear disingenuous and inhuman if you’re too structured with your approach, to the point where your community may be turned off. Your Twitter experience will change and evolve over time, because the community that follows you will help shape what you say and how you respond.
7. Listen and observe before engaging: Don’t just start tweeting assuming that the Twitter community is going to accept you with open arms. It’s important that you spend some time just listening and observing the behavior of those who are talking about you or your company. Understand how your customers behave and adjust accordingly.
8. Be authentic and believable:Authenticity is the golden rule in social media. We’ve known this for years, but there is another, related rule that is just as important: you and your brand need to be believable. This means spending time listening to your community, observing it, and learning about the dynamics of that community. Your will become believable only after you have established trust among those in your community. Because I am trusted by my followers, if I tweet that my new netbook is amazing and fits my mobile lifestyle, people will believe me and perhaps even buy one (it is amazing, by the way).
9. Track, measure and iterate: Sometimes it’s better just to launch a product or initiative, track it, measure the results and then iterate (versus planning every step).
10. Don’t just strategize, execute: Multiple daily conference calls are the norm in corporate America. Strategy sessions and meetings to plan strategy sessions are also constants. While this may be fine when planning a new product launch or corporate initiative, it is the wrong approach to using Twitter. When you have too many ideas and not enough people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done, you are going to find yourself late to the game. Or, in the case of Twitter, late to the conversation. By spending too much time trying to think of the best strategy, you are going to miss priceless opportunities to fix problems, answer questions, turn sour situations around, and create brand affinity with customers.

Everyone has heard the horror stories that mommy bloggers can cause (think Motrin), but a new study has confirmed that mommy bloggers are the largest user group online. An estimated 34 million US mothers go online at least once a month, and online activities are having a major effect on purchasing decisions and more. Interestingly, moms were less likely to use TV, magazines, newspapers or radio.

“A survey by Razorfish and CafeMom found that Websites, referrals from friends and family, and information from search engines were the most common sources online moms used to make a purchasing decision. According to Experian Simmons, 70% of online moms made a purchase online in the past 12 months. Also, when it comes to what moms shop for online, the Marketing to Moms Coalition found that 44% of online moms shopped for themselves—almost the same as the percentage who shopped online for their kids (45%). In addition, 49% said they researched products online.”

Moms surveyed by Razorfish and CafeMom were more likely to have shopped for clothing or accessories (40%) or food/cooking items (31%) online than baby/parenting gear (26%).