The short messaging social network, Twitter, has enjoyed phenomenal growth since its conception in 2006. Comscore worldwide data said that in September Twitter had 58 million unique monthly visitors. But how can your business benefit from “tweeting”?

To answer that we just need to take a look at a sample of Twitter success stories.

Comcast, the U.S. provider of cable services, is widely regarded as having the most successful customer service operations in social media and on the Web. Over the past year, Comcast has handled more than 11,500 customer service requests (official tickets) through Twitter.
 
Another company to take advantage of the Twitter phenomenon is Zappos the online retailer of shoes, bags, clothing and other accessories. They wanted to engage customers in order to increase sales. Employees quickly began interacting with customers, answering product questions, and helping with customer service. The company now has a Twitter following of over 1.5 million and last year had $1 billion in gross merchandise sales.

As a sales tool, Twitter came out tops for Dell. In March 2007, Dell Outlet created @DellOutlet and began posting messages and links to products online. In November 2008, Dell suddenly announced that it had made $500,000 through its Dell Outlet Twitter feed. Just a month later, Dell tweeted that it had surpassed the $1 million mark.

When Dell announced in early February that Dell Outlet would begin offering exclusive deals via Twitter, the number of @DellOutlet’s Twitter followers exploded, from 8,000 followers in early February to close to 500,000 followers in mid-May 2009. By the 6th of December their following was up to 1,462,523.

So far, Twitter has been a free service but it is expected that commercial accounts will be introduced soon. Within these new commercial accounts users will gain an enhanced experience with access to analytical tools and ways to gain feedback from their followers. The introduction of paid accounts will not only bring about some direct monetisation, but will also generate more interest among businesses and marketers, thus helping further growth.