Twitter is an excellent tool for sharing news. It has the power to turn topics viral, which can be very helpful for bringing publicity to a company or Twitter page. It can also bring a lot of traffic to businesses. When topics go viral on Twitter and are creating a buzz, they are known as trending topics.

For those who are not familiar with Twitter trending topics, they are breaking news that people are sharing and commenting on. A “#” may appear in front of the phrase or word, those are called hashtags, which categorize it into a topic that people can converse about it. It is a great way to promote your page.

They are listed on the right side of the Twitter homepage where the timeline appears. It can also be localized, rather than having a list of trending topics worldwide, Twitter allows users to narrow down the topics to local areas, so users can see what is going on in other countries.

Here is a list of examples for some of the trending topics in early 2011:

• #swineflu – for Swine Flu
• Cairo – capital of Egypt
• #prayforjapan – sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
• Libia/Libya – site of an ongoing civil war
• Fukushima – Japanese nuclear power plant
• William & Kate – Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
• Gadafi – Libyan political leader

Here are some topics relating to pop culture:

• Rebecca Black – pop singer of the song “Friday”
• Femme Fatale – newly-released Britney Spears album
• Charlie Sheen – actor from Two and A Half Men
• #tigerblood – hashtag made popular by Charlie Sheen
• Nate Dogg – rap artist
• Queen Gaga – referring to artist Lady Gaga

Here are a few for the end of the year that highlights some of the key events that took place recently:

• #London Riot- For the riots that happened in London
• #OccupyWallstreet- for what’s taking place in Wallstreet
• #Irene- for Hurrican Irene
• #VMA- For Beyonce’s news about her pregnancy
• #Thingslongerthankimsmarriage- from Kim Kardashian’s news on divorce
• #osamadead, #osamabinladen, #osama- Osama Bin ladens death

And of course, one that got so many reactions:

• #RIPStevejobs, #SteveJobs, #iHeaven, #iSad, #ThankyouSteve- for the passing of Steve Jobs

When Hurricane Irene hit in late August, #Irene became a popular hashtag and received over 1 million tweets that were related to the hurricane. TGDaily said it was a weak storm but a social media superstorm.

Trending topics are excellent way to follow news and keep updated on events. It is also a great way to share thoughts relating to that topic. It can lead to debate or even bring out a project to help others. An example would be the riots that took place in London. After the riots, a #riotcleanup hashtag was started which led to a Twitter page devoted to helping those affected by the riots.

Twitter was the first to report Osama bin Laden’s death, even before President Obama’s broadcast. Country singer Keith Urban tweeted hearing about the death from a credible source and soon after Twitter was receiving over 4000 tweets per second.

Twitter trending topics are very useful for promoting an event or any news in general. It is important to promote your hashtag so users will know the official hashtag for whatever it is that is being promoted and can join  in on the conversation.

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Many companies do not see complaints as an opportunity to get free consultation from customers that can solve problems and make their services better for free. It could be that they cannot accept the fact that one unsatisfied customer makes a much greater impact on the image of one brand than the ones who are satisfied and how important it is to have a serious focus in changing these problems.

Companies should be aware about word-of-mouth, but now there is the much more powerful channel: word-of-mouse. Social networks such as Twitter — with more than 100 million active users updating more than 50 million times per day – are the perfect environments to complain and companies should seize this opportunity to gain valuable information about their image.

The advantages of listening and give attention to the complaints are open a channel for a good relationship with customers and increase loyalty, improve the image of the company, use as an assessment regarding performance and quality, study of the market and to be open to what customers want, and to be fast in innovation.

One crucial factor on the complaint management is the time to decrease the amount of dissatisfaction of one customer and turn him as soon as possible to a marketing positive compound. Twitter can became a tool to the companies and help not just in discover what people are talking about as help about the time factor and accelerate the process of a solution.

Companies in Brazil are giving a good example because companies are taking around 5 minutes to 2 hours to answer customers who complains in twitter , much more faster than using the foundation to protect customer – the “faster” way which use to take at least one month.

The US in other hand is wasting their opportunity. Around 70% of companies are ignoring customer complaints on twitter  and consequently losing chances to put their companies and brands to the front of others’ minds in a positive way.

Here are a few tips for companies to use Twitter as an efficient way to develop a good complaint management system:

• Team: The Company must be a team prepared to deal with complaint and with enough power to reach a balance between  company/customer interests and have enough powder to create solutions. Make customers talk and in the end do not have the powder to solve make him talk with one person, after to another, after with the manager, and the director just increase the level of irritation;
• Open the eyes: search who is talking about your company and what they are saying;
• Open the “voice”: contact the person in order to understand the dissatisfaction and open the relationship. Be polite and show empathy. Be aware that there are much more people watching this “conversation”.
• Give possibilities for solutions and show interest. It is also important remember that customers sometimes can abuse and this is not acceptable, but if the company shows their face in environments such as Twitter, others will understand.
• Time: all of this must happen quickly, and it is also related to the quality of the personal responsible for this task.
• 140 characters: remember the power of these characters in both sides: customer to the Companies and Companies to the customers.

The market has changed a lot. Before it was a few companies and a lot of customers with high level of loyalty, nowadays the reality shows a lot of companies and customers with no loyalty that are full of power to impact the network. The complaint management system must reach dissatisfied customers wherever they are, and for sure, a lot of them in Twitter.

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Social Media continues to expand around the world and impact it, in its own way. In Guatemala, e-Marketing didn’t start picking up until about 3 to 4 years ago and it wasn’t only until about a year and a half to two years ago that agencies started to develop social media strategies.

After seeing some of the success from local companies, restaurants started taking advantage of it, to get their share of the market. It continues to expand throughout the years, with Facebook being the biggest social media platform utilized in Guatemala today. With only 2.5 million people with access to the internet in Guatemala, 1.6 million people have a Facebook account.

However, before Facebook, hi5 was considered one of the most popular social networking sites. In 2008 hi5 had 12,831,000 Latin American unique visitors ages 15 and up, while Facebook had only 7,711,000. MySpace became very big 2 years ago. According to comScore, social media has always been huge in Latin American countries. They are heavy internet users and mainly use the internet as a way to communicate with others.

According to Enrique Parros of TPP Emarketing, Twitter is a Social Media platform that is starting to grow in Guatemala and the reason for this growth is that mobile phones are becoming more easily attainable. The demographic segment in Guatemala that is currently active on twitter is mostly made up of kids, but 24- 35 year olds are starting to pick up on Twitter. This is why twitter is still an educational process in Guatemala.

The main social media Platform used for marketing in Guatemala is currently Facebook, due to the high concentration of people logged into Facebook. Facebook, to TPP Emarketing, is a great way for consumers to communicate with a brand. It is also a great way for people to interact with the brand, which will later help them to decide the future of the brand, and where it is heading. Another way Facebook is being used in Guatemala is as a focus group.

One major success story for TPP Emarketing is from the Facebook page Claro, which has 264,196 likes on Facebook. Gallo was also another great example of how successful Facebook was in helping to boost sales. In April of 2011, Gallo had about 90% of the market share in the country.

TPP Emarketing works with so many brands, such as Claro, P & G, and McDonald’s, that it would be hard to manage each account separately. This is why they use Hootsuite. It is a service used to manage social media accounts on one dashboard. With Hootsuite, companies like TPP E-marketing can manage their Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and myspace accounts at once, and even schedule posts for later dates.

E-marketing is still growing in Guatemala, and for some it is still a learning experience, but digital marketing is always growing and expanding. Agencies are starting to pick up on it and take advantage of the marketing tools that are accessible. Some of the services offered today are SEO marketing, Public Relations, E-Mobile, Social Media and E-Advertising.

Digital marketing may be growing but TPP E-marketing understands the importance of utilizing it in their marketing campaigns and strategies.

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Social Media Today dedicates itself to understanding and studying the complexity of new media in our societies. This innovative website, gathers professionals from all around the world, forming a comprehensive community on the dwelings of social networking, advertising, publicity and other subjects.

A recent article by Barry Hurd, a speaker on online business practices, gives insight on the top five questions business owners must ask to completely understand social media policies and how to work with them to their advantage. They often rely on traditional human resources tactics and forget that they too can manage their workers by using online channels.

Who owns it?  Hurd brings up the important question: if employees are authorized to post online during work hours or if they must do so as a part of their job, who truly owns the company’s social media policy? Owners should take into account that a laid-off employee can easily take a firm’s mailing list and all of its contacts, causing hundreds of dollars in damages.

One must make proactive decisions regarding online communication and the owner must make sure his or her is its leader and the head of a social channel hierarchy.

Do you have access to all your social accounts 24/7? This topic is also related to leadership and control. One must be in complete control of the communication hierarchy to ensure that there are no leaks and that all of the company’s assets are protected.

Have you identified mission critical paths? Hurd said that a vast array of processes for a social media policy need special supervision, and some have particularities that must be taken into account. Barry Hurd singles out sales, marketing, security breaches, employee/client privacy, investor relations, regulatory concerns, among others:

“Each of these communication processes have mission critical elements that are accelerated by social media usage. In many cases the most immediate requirement is the management of fast and effective communication for senior managers and executive leadership.

In the world of social media policy, many mid-management employees feel they are doing the ‘right thing’ and are unfortunately trying to make decisions in an area of business that they are acting blindly in.”

Are you monitoring your employees for rogue communications? What should you do when an employee disrespects you or a company client? This is a very delicate matter which must be settled using sensible criteria and one must be very careful of its consequences; they could potentially violate someone’s civil rights and liberties.

And finally: Does it influence hire/fire decisions? This question takes into consideration the legal requirements of firing someone based on a comment they made in a social communication channel.

One must take into account the legal precedents involved in such cases, and according to the National Labor Relations Board, ”Our review of cases found many specific policies alleged to be overbroad, including those that restrict discussion of wages, corrective actions and discharge of co-workers, employment investigations, and disparagement of the company or its management.”

They have “only just begun to address these many important issues, and it is, of course, hard to speculate as to how the Board will rule as these cases develop and whether those decisions will withstand judicial scrutiny. It is hoped that this survey can assist employers and counsel identify issues with which they should be aware as they grapple with the application of labor law to employee use of social media.”

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