How Small Businesses Can Use Twitter's Business Center

Jun 25, 2010

Twitter has begun to test what they call the "Twitter Business Center." Currently, it is only available to a few users, but Twitter will gradually roll it out to all accounts.

Some of the key features as of now are:

  1. Customizable page contents
  2. Verified account pages
  3. Extra preferences
  4. Ability to add contributors

Maybe the biggest caveat is that businesses can receive direct messages from anyone on the service, even from users they do not follow!  This allows for a much more free flow of communication between businesses and potential customers.

Here is a preview:

Once activated, a business' account is automatically verified.  This signals a move by Twitter to offer certain aspects of the platform to brands and organizations, not just individual users.
Interesting to note is the "Contributors" tab, which gives organizations the ability to add multiple users to a certain business account so that they have the ability to tweet on its behalf.

So what does this mean for small businesses?

The ability to accept direct messages from any follower, even those they are not following, allows organizations to better engage. Businesses can elicit feedback from any follower as well as perform customer service more easily.  In addition, with the introduction of the "contributors" tab, businesses can now have several employees tweeting on behalf of the organization - this gives the organization a greater deal of versatility and flexibility.It will be interesting to see how this impacts businesses as Twitter begins to roll out its Business Center to more and more accounts. It is definitely a sign that Twitter is making the push to become a more viable business platform, one which businesses should utilize to their advantage!