Web content management vendor Jadu has released a Twitter module, enabling customers to use the micro-blogging site from within their CMS.

Jadu CMS Client for Twitter is available as a free upgrade and can enable users to tweet from within the Jadu CMS. Jadu hopes it will offer users the chance to improve customer service, knowledge management and brand identity.

Suraj Kika, CEO at Jadu, told CBR that improving an organisation’s ability to interact with its customers was one of the driving forces behind not only this announcement but also the rise of Twitter within the enterprise space.

“It’s about immediacy and ease of use,” he said. “But it’s also about quickly communicating and engaging with customers.”

All tweets can be stored, something Jadu believes is vital to enable organisations to swiftly respond to Freedom of Information requests as well as deal with other queries. “One of the things about Twitter is that the content within it is quickly consumed and disappears, that is why we incorporated with storage function,” Kika said.

Recent LGEO Research figures suggested that 20% of local authorities are now using Twitter while O2 estimates that 700,000 SMBs are tweeting. “We want people to understand that the web is changing,” Kika said. “There is a need and a demand for this sort of technology.”

Lichfield District Council is a Jadu user that will be incorporating Jadu CMS Client for Twitter into its system. Elizabeth Thatcher, comms manager at the Council, told CBR that using Twitter has already proved worthwhile.

“We started using it to keep people up to date with planning applications last year, but started using if for more general purposes in January this year,” she said. “For example, we used it to inform people about the delayed bin collections in February.”

Thatcher added that they also use it to inform local residents of the last Council news, as it is a cheap and effective way of communicating. “It’s usually difficult to measure just how effective things like this are. But with Twitter you can see how many people are following you,” she said.

Kika added that although the module will initially be available only for Twitter, Jadu does plan to add all the major social networking sites at a later date.