I just came across this great list from Forbes Magazine featuring the 21 ways green businesses can you use Twitter.
Ok, they were just talking about business in general. But all of the same tactics apply for you sustainability officers and green marketers.
- Coupon Campaigns: Tweet a coupon for your green product or service in 140 characters or less.
- To-Go Sales Channel: Let your preferred customers Tweet their orders to you so they’re ready for pick-up.
- Viral Marketing: Use hashtags (Ways to categorize Tweets) in a promotion to giveaway stuff to your followers.
- “Conversational” Marketing: Don’t sell. Converse. Encourage the folks in your green organization to readily communicate your sustainable efforts (both the triumphs and failures). Transparency is king!
- Artful Customer Service: If you have many followers behind your cause, Twitter is a quick and easy way to keep your customers informed. They’ll appreciate it and you.
- Focus Groups: Ask your followers what they think. Enough said.
- (Very) Direct Sales: Use search.twitter.com to troll for customers, and then greet them with eye-popping promotional offers.
- Poaching Customers: Using free applications like TweetDeck, you can “spy” on your competition and preempt their efforts with better service or discounts.
- News Feed: Twitter is supposed to be about conversation, but it’s pretty handy to blast out information. Just make sure it’s timely and relevant to your followers, or you’ll run the risk of being worse than unpopular, unfollowed!
- Customer Expectation Management: When things go bad, as they sometimes do, be quick to let your customers on Twitter know, and begin managing the challenge before it’s a problem.
- Targeted Content: If you have varying customers that buy different product lines from you, then by all means set up different Twitter accounts so you can converse with them about their interests, not yours.
- Mobile Marketing: If you and your green initiative are on the move, then let your customers know where you are by regularly tweeting your location.
- Corralling Eyeballs: Sports franchises already have “Corralled eyeballs” for their events, so they often tap into Twitter to talk specifically to that group. Can you do the same for your sustainable vision?
- Call for Change: You can reach out to your followers with petitions on Twitter to help enact change.
- Vendor Selection: Sustainable companies can source green suppliers through Twitter with ever expanding online marketplaces.
- Conflict Resolution: This is one of the most powerful tools your customers have. So if they need action from you, take it promptly. Otherwise you may be on the receiving end of thousands of humiliating reTweets.
- Internal Communication (With a Marketing Kicker): Create an open chat room for the world to monitor, and imagine the free innovation that just may come your way.
- Employee Recruitment: Twitter gives you an automatic filter on potential employees, because they get to monitor and learn what you’re about before they decide if you’re the right organization to work for. Saves both of you time.
- “Tweet-Ups”: Organize an event through Twitter to rally your supporterss to physically attend a Tweet-Up at your green store, sustainable cause, environmental event, etc.
- Research: There are many Twitter polling tools to let you quickly take the temperature of your followers without the costs of formal studies.
- Raising Capital: Organize simple giving campaigns on Twitter that link back to your site.
How do you use Twitter to make your green marketing that much more sustainable? Please let us know below.
Just as I was defending Twitter this morning for being an excellence resource for expert information, I opened my email to learn that 
