Have you discovered the current hot social tool named Twitter? Think of it as instant messaging only instead of the message being private, it’s broadcast to everyone as a general comment.
Messages within Twitter are commonlly referred to as Tweets. They can be a maximum of 140 characters long which matches the US maximum for cellular text messages (aka SMS), one of the main ways that subscribers can read tweets from those they “follow”.
Twitter is used by people to keep up to date with what their friends are doing the day. The messages can be as innocent as indicating that someone is having a bad day at work. Often times during the day the Tweets will rant about particularly stressful events.
This is where companies have an opportunity to keep their ear to the ground and catch any type of early chit-chat on Twitter that might be unfavorable (or perhaps favorable) about their product(s).
Most companies know about Google Alerts which are saved searches that Google will use to send you messages whenever select topics appear in the news. Many companies have set up Google Alerts for themselves so that they’ll be instantly notified by Google whenever their company name appears online.
TweetBeep.com is a similar service only it’s designed to scan Twitter feeds for keywords that you designate. These keywords could be your company name – or possibly the name of a competitor. When the service detects the keyword in a Twitter feed you’ll receive an email alert with the name of the person who sent the Tweet.
By monitoring the Twitter streams you can stay on top of what’s being discussed about your company and have a chance to reward or defend any unfair (or complimentary) messages.
TweetBeep is currently free and available at http://www.tweetbeep.com
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