Twitter is a highly popular and viral social media tool. It is considered a micro-blogging tool and means of staying in touch with friends and family - letting them know where you are and what you are doing, etc.. But how do we leverage this catchy social media tool that allows you to build followings and influence communities for enterprise? Here is a case study example of how Coverity did just that with the help of their agency, Position2.

About Coverity
Coverity’s static source code analysis solutions automatically enable better software quality by providing development teams with tools to systematically measure, analyze, and improve both the inputs to the software production process and the results produced. As software systems evolve over time, Coverity helps production teams easily understand and manage changes made to the source code and system architecture.

Why Twitter?
Coverity has a vast number of valuable whitepapers and programming resources posted on their website. Coverity wanted to better leverage these resources to establish a strong brand identity with its core target audience.

Twitter is widely used among software programmers, coders, and developers that work for medium to large organizations.

By using Twitter to promote Coverity’s resources, the goal was to:

1. Increase the awareness and visibility of Coverity resources within their target group.
2. Setup discussion channels regarding Coverity’s value
3. Increase non paid traffic coming to the website

What They Did
A profile was created on Twitter using the following keywords:

• Software developer
• Open Source Specialist
• Programmer in Java, Linux, Python, Perl

When a search is performed on the above keywords, Coverity’s profile will show up in the search results. This facilitates the establishment of networks with Coverity’s audiences.

1. Post regular updates on industry news, tech events etc.
2. Search for other users (our target audience) and follow their updates. The following tools were used to search for twitter users:
   • http://twitdir.com/ - a Twitter user directory
   • http://search.twitter.com/ - helps to search for twitter updates in real time
3. Post updates on Coverity. Give links to the website. This helps improve website traffic and creates the link between the Twitter and Coverity websites.  E.g. Updates are posted about Coverity’s Open source report available on the website. These reports generated significant numbers of new visitors to the site in 22 days.

Results
The Twitter account was established in July. The following chart indicates the traffic from Twitter for the partial first month.

Overall, the site saw a 40% increase in referral traffic with a significant portion attributed to Twitter activity.

If you would like to learn more about how you can leverage social media, don’t miss our upcoming Social Media Strategies Conference on October 29-30, 2008.