According to a recent Edison Research study 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks. That means they are most likely following your brand and your product.
That means they are discussing how, why, when and where they use your product and service. And you’re not there? 
Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users with 300,000 signing up every day. 180 million unique visitors use the site every month. It’s a giant laboratory and meeting place and it’s likely your product is being discussed. I’ll bet if you did a Twitter Search right now, you’ll find someone talking about your product, company or something you product solves. Try it.
The point is that if you’re participating, you’re learning more about how your products and services are being used. You become more effective as a Technical Communicator because you’re discovering more about your customers. You’re also able to socially curate the best of Twitter in order to learn more about your industry, competitors or problems your product solves.
Here are the questions to ask yourself or your Technical Communicator
- Out of the 55 million tweets per day, how many are about your product/service or about something your product solves?
- If 180 million unique visitors use Twitter every month, why aren’t we asking them questions about our product to learn more about how we solve their problems?
- Why aren’t we building a following on Twitter so that we can ask our followers to help us with market research?
- Why aren’t we monitoring consumer sentiment about our product or service so that we can take action to rectify or improve negative situations?
- Since there are ongoing conversations about our product/service, why aren’t we participating in them to build good will?
- Since we can segment and target users on Twitter, why don’t we convey information about our product directly to customers and prospective customers?
- Why don’t we provide valuable links to reports, videos, whitepapers about our product to Twitter users?
- Why aren’t we asking Twitter followers to help improve our product documentation?
- Why aren’t you following and networking with other Technical Communicators to learn more about trends, strategies and best practices?
- Did you know that there are many organizations that provide drip learning through daily tweets about their product or service? Follower counts increase as a result.
As we enter into this social, Enterprise 2.0 world of business, it’s becoming more and more about customer service. What we do after that is secondary. The fact that you can publically reply to tweets about your products or what your products solves is incredible.
You’ve never had that kind of reach before as a Technical Communicator. Word of mouth is the game now. Word of mouth is how it used to be, and is now that on steroids.
So how do i get started? Read Anne Gentle’s article on the subject. Also see Amit Agarwal’s use case on Dell.
Any objections to using Twitter as Technical Communicators seems trite. The medium has proved itself. That some still believe technical communication can still be done with Microsoft Word and a static webpage is illusory and quite anachronistic.
But as obvious as that may seem to some of us, there are still quite a few people that believe the field of technical communication is still about one-way communication with our customers. No sharing, no feedback, no curation.
Which leaves us with one more big question. Why are Technical Communicators not embracing new Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter?
(Cross-posted @ Seek Omega )
Other than items 8 and 9, there’s really no technical communication application; they’re all pretty much marketing/public relations. Now admittedly many of us technical writers want to be the corporate communication czar but this list just doesn’t work as justification for using Twitter as a technical writer.
However, I *do* think that Twitter is useful and more than likely even important to technical writers… just not for the reasons given.
PUBLIUS
Although many people believe that the World Wide Web is anonymous and secure from censorship, the reality is very different. Governments, law courts, and other officials who want to censor, examine, or trace a file of materials on the Web need merely go to the server (the online computer) where they think the file is stored. Using their subpoena power, they can comb through the server’s drives to find the files they are looking for and the identify of the person who created the files.
On Friday June 30, 2000, however, researches at AT & T Labs announced the creation of Publius, a software program that enables Web users to encrypt (translate into a secret code) their files – text, pictures, or music – break them up like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and store the encrypted pieces on many different servers scattered all over the globe on the World Wide Web. As a result, any one wanting to examine or censor the files or wanting to trace the original transaction that produced the file would find it impossible to succeed because they would have to examine the contents of dozens of different servers all over the world, and the files in the servers would be encrypted and fragmented in a way that would make the pieces impossible to identify without the help of the person who created the file. A person authorized to retrieve the file, however, would look through a directory of his files posted on a Publius – affiliated website, and the Publius network would reassemble the file for him at his request. Researchers published a description of Publius at http://www.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius.
Although many people welcomed the way that the new software would enhance freedom of speech on the Web, many others were dismayed. Bruce Taylor, an antipornography activist for the National Law Center for Children and Families, stated : “It’s nice to be anonymous, but who wants to be more anonymous than criminals, terrorists, child molesters, child pornographers, hackers and e-mail virus punks.” Aviel Rubin and Lorrie Cranor, the creators of Publius, however, hoped that their program would help people in countries where freedom of speech was repressed and individuals were punished for speaking out. The ideal user of Publius, they stated, was “a person in China observing abuses of human rights on a day – to – day basis.”
Questions :
1. Analyze the ethics of marketing Publius using utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring. In your judgement, is it ethical to market Publius ? Explain.
2. Are the creators of Publius in any way morally responsible for any criminal acts that criminals are able to carry out and keep secret by relying on Publius ? Is AT & T in any way morally responsible for these ? Explain your answers.
3. In your judgment, should governments allow the implementation of Publius ? Why or why not ?