Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

The folks at Twitter have put together a fine deck of slides for businesses who are still struggling with how to use the Twitter platform. The same insights can be used for personal tweeting too but I prefer to see Twitter as a very effective business tool. Below is one of the slides that explains you don’t even need a Twitter account if you want to listen to what people are saying about your brand. The slides are a must read for all businesses or business owners. Download the PDF here.

In the current economic climate it goes without saying that most small businesses have been feeling their share of the pain. Of course, depending on which particular sector of an industry your company has the most experience in also determines the number of times the dice will roll in your favor; some industries thrive throughout downturns others suffer as their clients suffer – hard and fast decisions have to be made almost weekly to keep a company on course. Nemo is thriving but we had to make a course correction.

Unfortunately, this week, Nemo had to make a very hard decision to lay off 9 of our employees; 9 very smart, gifted and intelligent workers, who through no fault of their own find themselves suddenly without a job. People are the backbone of every company so it goes without saying that their loss is also Nemo’s loss.

In the end we are all human and of course like every company should we care about our laid off employees welfare. To help them we decided to turn first to the power of the community and social media by using our Twitter account. By noon on the day of the lay offs I sent out a message [or tweet] to the community explaining the cuts, but more importantly letting companies know that if they needed these skilled workers they could get in touch directly with me or Nemo. It worked.

I was blown away at how fast the response to my tweet was. Obviously in such a tight-knit community there was an outpouring of goodwill and good lucks etc but, most importantly, more than five companies and/or individual business owners reached out to us for info about our released staff. The result was that some of the Nemo alumni were in job interviews as soon as the next day. Obviously good news all around and it’s worth pointing out the power of Twitter and reaching out to your supportive community online.

Our message on Twitter.

And a typical response and re-Tweet.

When the Nemo alumni land new jobs, and if they are willing to have me share the details, I will post them up here.

Follow us on Twitter: @NemoHQ

Stars Love Twitter

Did you know (or care) that Martha Stewart is on Twitter? Currently, she has over 200,000 followers, including Jane Fonda and Michael Phelps. In return, she follows P. Diddy and Snoop Dogg (who refers to Twitter as “twizzle”).

Other famous tweeters include Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, Shaq, Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer, Yoko Ono, Al Gore and Demi Moore.

When celebrities join Twitter, it lends a sense of credibility and authenticity to their brand. And more importantly, they’re generating a constant stream of free publicity with the ability to set the record straight when something unflattering arises.

Fans love tuning in to hear random tidbits from idols’ their daily lives such as when Martha tweeted on March 4th that she had just dined out with Ludacris. According to her, “he loved lunch–esp. the choc cake.”

Of course, there is always a potential downside when a celebrity is allowed to run free with technology away from the watchful eyes of their publicists. Recently, Beyoncé’s little sis Solange Knowles sent out erratic messages to her thousands of followers, only to follow up with a tweet the next day, wondering how she had ended up in the hospital.

Fans prefer the real thing, even when it’s a train wreck in progress. One of Courtney Love’s recent tweets was as dramatic as ever; “THIS MOVE HAS BEEN A TRAGEDY. THIS HOUSE IS CHAOS BEYOND WHAT I COULD HAVE IMAGINED, SOMEONE THREW OUT A HUGELY EXPENSIVE PIECE OF ART!”

While most celebrities compose their own tweets, there’s a handful that hand off the task to their staff, including 50 Cent. His 230,000 followers weren’t impressed when they learned that he has his “web guy” write and post for him. Though, there’s no need to get angry since “the energy of it is all him.” On the temptation of hiring someone else to tweet for him, Shaquille O’Neal nailed the general consensus by saying that “It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”

If you really can’t get enough of celebrities on Twitter, Celebrity Tweet (complete with the too-obvious tagline “Stalk Celebrities on Twitter!”) provides a real-time feed of their tweets.

Not surprisingly, Twitter really has become a self-induced stalker’s paradise.

This is becoming common news these days because of the ability to immediately update your followers via Twitter. Story from the Daily Telegraph.

“The playing out of major events in the world of blogs and social media is becoming an ever more familiar tale. Today’s plane crash just outside Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam broke first on Twitter, the popular microblogging service. Jonathan Nip, who lived near the scene of the accident, was one of the first to tweet about the crash. “Looking at a crashed aeroplane near Schiphol,” he wrote, just moments after the plane came down.”