At our special SXSW edition of the Austin AMA Power Lunch, Guy Kawasaki spoke on using Twitter effectively. (Seeing as how he has 220,000 followers, Guy seems like the right fellow to offer Twitter advice. )

Guy suggests five levels of Twitter utilization.

MONITOR

Twitter is the only way to track in real time what people are saying about you, your products, or your company (or, for that matter, about your competitor, your competitor’s products, or your competitor’s company).

• Use search.twitter.com to monitor mentions of yourself.
• Use search.twitter.com to monitor mentions of your competitors.
• KILLER TWITTER TIP FROM GUY Use search.twitter.com to monitor tweets to and from any user

ENGAGE

Get into a conversation with your customers. Virgin America provides a good example of using Twitter for customer engagement. They use twitter for mass messaging such as flight delay announcements and special offers, as well as for one-to-one customer support, such as handling complaints and even in-flight tech support..

SELL

Twitter provides free, instant, real-time selling to self-selected (meaning they have identified themselves to you as being receptive to your offers) customers. If that doesn’t qualify Twitter as a marketing weapon, nothing does. @delloutlet is an excellent example of how Twitter can be used as a sales tool. If Dell needs to unload overstocked merchandise, for instance, they can tweet a fabulous discount (using a unique coupon code to track conversions, of course), to instantly reach millions of followers—an infinitely better tactic than running a print ad or even sending an email campaign.

SUPPORT

@comcastcares is a popular example of an effective utilization of twitter as a customer support tool. Twitter can be used to identify frustrated users as they are experiencing a problem. Immediate response to complaints is the first step toward turning a disgruntled client into a raving fan of your company.

PROSPECT

Find prospective customers by searching for subjects or areas of interest (“photography” if you sell cameras, for example). You can use Twitter’s advanced search to target specific locations (photographers in the Austin area). You can even save search queries.

KILLER TWITTER TIP FROM GUY You can find users with a keyword in their Twitter user name using Google search: intitle:”photographer” on twitter site:twitter.com.

A Marketing Weapon Is Only Powerful if You Have Lots of Followers. So How Do you Get Lots of Followers?

Guy’s Answer: Tweet Interesting Stuff

Easier said than done? Guy offered a number of resources to help you find and distribute great content to build your Twitter following.

• Alltop.com is a content aggregation site with top rated content on virtually every subject. Find interesting stories to tweet.
• Objectivemarketer.comlets you generate and automate tweets. It can even be set to automatically retweet messages.
  • KILLER TWITTER TIP FROM GUY Twitter is like CNN: CNN doesn’t assume its viewers are watching 24/7, so they repeat stories throughout the day. It’s OK for you to do the same thing with your followers, who are not monitoring your tweets all day long.
  • Objectivemarketer shortens the tweet each time it retweets so you can see how many views you capture with each retweet.
• Stumbleupon.com is another source for interesting articles.
• SmartBrief.com is a human-curated site that posts a daily summary page and email containing interesting stories on a wide range of topics.

Those are just a few of the tips and resources we got from this distinguished member of the Twitterati. Want more cutting edge lessons in marketing awesomeness? Don’t miss another Austin AMA Power Luncheon!