For many businesses, including manufacturing firms, social media platforms like Twitter have provided an opportunity to gain exposure, solidify customer loyalty and drum up new business.

Many manufacturing firms are tapping into Twitter to boost their business, find new clients and build their reputations, but some are ignoring this tool – to their detriment – or approaching Twitter in the wrong way. For these companies, the goal is to cease being the latter and start being the former.

Companies that have been successful in taking control and making the most of their presence on Twitter use the platform to forward their company’s brand and message and stay relevant to their customers, prospects and partners. These companies have followed a distinct path to success:

Listen. Before you craft a Twitter program, it’s important to listen to what’s being said about your company and industry and understand how your customers and potential customers are using Twitter, according to social media consultant Shel Israel.

“People who show up and listen, begin playing with search on the site and finding what is relevant to them, will have very valuable conversations,” Israel explains.

Understand how Twitter works. Conventional wisdom may say there’s not much you can do with 140 characters, but that’s incorrect. Success requires an in-depth understanding of how Twitter works, its “language” and how successful companies manage their messages. It’s also important to grasp the immediacy of Twitter: taking days to respond to a Tweet, which may work with e-mail responses, will not convince customers and potential clients you are enthusiastic about serving them in this channel… or at all.

Have goals. Without a well-crafted plan to meet customers’ and prospects’ needs in Twitter, or by allowing one person in your organization to handle all Tweets, regardless of their nature, you will look like an amateur and forfeit the dynamic interaction Twitter can offer. Remember that your goal can be multi-pronged: to gain prospects, for example, or to support existing customers or introduce a new product. To accomplish these things, it will be necessary to involve multiple departments within your organization.

Understand who you’re talking to. A lot of marketing – most of it, in fact – is one-to-many: marketing e-mails, brochures and direct mail that are sent into a black hole with a hope and a prayer. Twitter is the precise opposite: it’s a one-to-one or one-to-few platform, and generic messages simply won’t do.

Find your customers and prospects. Be sure to reach the right people, or your social media efforts will be wasted. For manufacturing companies, it may be harder to locate the target group. Twitter offers tools that can help, including a search feature at www.search.twitter.com that can locate existing clients or partners. Use relevant keywords to find your industry niche, but beware of making search terms too broad lest you end up with a lot of meaningless data. Twellow allows you to scan Twitter users’ bios, names and locations – the truly relevant information  – without getting bogged down in the Tweets themselves, which may not be relevant (some people feel the need to Tweet about their second cup of coffee).

Style yourself an expert. Keep your Tweets relevant to your industry to make it easy for the right people to find you. Offer value that is closely aligned with your brand, creating Tweets that are both informative and complimentary. Try to keep the self-promotion to a minimum, and be certain most of your posts are relevant and offer value to your audience.

Remember that it’s a customer support channel. While you may have a call center or other customer support department, realize that many people today use Twitter to air problems or complaints. Monitor them regularly – once a week won’t do – and be sure to attend to customers on an individual basis. The last thing you need is a Tweet that expresses a mild concern about your product or service escalating into a message that blasts your company.

Cross-promote your efforts. In other words, don’t Tweet in a vacuum. Consider running a Twitter feed on your website, advertise your company’s presence on Twitter and lead your followers to other informative sources that exist outside Twitter.