Back in April I saw an article by security blogger (and CSTO?) Bruce Schneier titled Fake Facts on Twitter and was intruiged. In the beginning of April Bruce had instituted his own little Twitter experiment to see how effectively he could spread false facts among a group of eager republicans who were bickering over the details of the first stimulus. The results were shocking as he was able to spread his false information quickly and to a wide audience using Twitter and some social engineering as tools.

Let’s break this hack down and see if we can learn something about this and apply it to the legitimate business world.

1. Bruce created a Twitter account with a theme targeted for his audience,
2. He then harvested follower lists of popular republican Twitter accounts.
3. He used people’s tendencies to “follow back” to build a list of over 1000 followers.
4. He then spread his message which was highly targeted (and effective) to the audience.

In summary what Bruce did was create a brand, identify his market, acquire access to an audience (using Twitter) and then market to that audience his message.

Pretty simple when you break it down, and when you consider the reality that the effect would have been almost exactly the same even if the data was true, you start to realize how your business can benefit from social tools like Twitter combined with some creative thinking.

One of the key missteps I see many business owners make is they do steps 1 and 4, but without steps 2 and 3 their marketing and overall efforts in getting the word out either fall on deaf ears (wrong market) or aren’t heard at all.

Successful Twitter brands use the platform to build relationships, and engage the audience. Brands who simply ‘broadcast’ lose a majority of the benefits Twitter and social networks have to offer.

Further Reading: Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform