How Your Bank Can Benefit From Using Twitter

While Jack Dorsey Twitter and the whole team will continue to celebrate its fifth successful anniversary, I'd take a minute or two to contribute to a number of ways in which Twitter can help you stay in touch with your customers and your current financial services industry and payments industry news.

Before you dismiss Twitter, and cross out as just another fad of social media, you will agree with me that the following statistics are impressive:

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day : This is the time it took from the first billionth on Twitter Twitter.
  
• 1 week : This is the current amount of time it takes users to add another billion Tweets.
  
• 460 000 . The average number of new accounts opened daily in February 2011

I'll admit that sometimes a person who thinks Twitter primarily as a way to share your thoughts on the new restaurant, interesting articles you've come across, or to comment on your favorite sports team's games. But now, Twitter is more than just entertainment. If properly used, it can be very useful business tool for the rapid exchange of information, collect information about your competitors and build relationships with current customers and potential new ones.

If you're new to Twitter, you May not be sure where and how to get started. One way to get started with Twitter is to use them as a tool to stay current on payments industry news. Below I've listed a handful of informative publications and organizations that follow use Twitter to help promote their latest news and analysis:

• American Banker - @ AmerBanker
  
• Bank Technology News - @ BankTechNews
  
• Independent Community Bankers Association - @ icbanews
  
• ABA Banking Journal - @ ABABankingJourn
  
• Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) - @ ElecTranAssoc
  
• NetBanker - @ netbanker
  
• Bai - @ BAI_Info

You should also keep track of your payments and other providers (if they are on Twitter). Sign in to Twitter and start searching for them by name or their official Twitter handle (starting with @), then click "Follow" button. Then, visit the Twitter home page, where you'll see the latest stream of Tweets from companies and people you follow. Then when you come across an interesting title, simply click on the link to read the full article.

Twitter and provides easy access to the latest payment industry news when you're on the move with their mobile applications for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7. That way you can quickly check the Tweets you have a few seconds and keep up with the latest news and much more.

Are you still skeptical about Twitter? I suggest taking 15-30 minutes to try it. I'm sure you'll be surprised to find it.