Twitter has been a powerful asset for my business! It's one of those things that has really fit me. I'm not really a sociable person in real life but it really fits me well and it's been a huge asset for my business. I got really into it last November or December. I've a list here of things right off the top of my head that I noticed that people do wrong and that people should be doing and things that I do that makes twitter work.
1. Picture: Your picture (the avatar picture) in almost all cases should be a picture of you. You don't have to have a portrait quality picture, that's not really necessary. What's really important is it's a picture of you.
2. Username: In almost all cases, your username needs to be your first and last names. You need to have your name viewable. If you want to use your business name, go ahead but then also include your real name so that when they click on your avatar, they will see your real name. I see too many businesses on Twitter, people trying to run an online business and don't tell their names - that is crazy! You must have your name up there. I just use Steve Weber, that's my username and a lot of marketers, that's just what they use. If you have a choice (unless you have a really good reason not to), use your name as your username. You can change usernames any time you like.
3. Tweets: 90 to 95% of the "tweets" need to be about good content. Say something worthwhile! It doesn't have to be about your niche, your area; it can just be about life in general or current events. Post a topic worth reading and is interesting enough to catch people's attention. Point people to links on your site or your blog, to cool links that you found on the Internet. Direct people into that kind of content, that's relative to either your specific niche or to a lot of people who are into Internet and computer because those are the ones in general who are always in Twitter. A lot of people are interested in all kinds, all things in the Internet. About 95% of the time, (that sounds like a lot, but really you need to do that) you are sending them content and not some kind of offer to buy something.
4. Blog: A lot of times, I create blog posts that have really good content in them; but also I have an offer on that page. So it's not like I'm sending them right to a sales page. I send them to a blog post that has really good information and say, "By the way, here is a link to an offer or here's a link to a free download." Most of the time I have a video on that page and they see that I sent them to my page with really good content or to somebody else's really good content. You just can't put up every other tweet to be a link to a sales page. You just can't do that. That just totally defeats your purpose.
5. Be Consistent: If you are not consistent, then don't bother. Don't waste your time. If you're going to get on Twitter once or twice a week, just forget it. You are just wasting the time that you're on twitter. If you want to make twitter work as a marketing tool, you have to get on it every single day. Sure, on an emergency or something that came up that you cannot get on to your computer, that happens, but if Twitter is going to work as a marketing tool for you, you have to login and check your account every single day. Not all day! You don't have to be on there every hour, every day. However, you need to be on there to check the replies and check your direct messages and respond back to people, and communicate with people and put some tweets up and keep your self relevant, keep your account moving forward and keep your account out there in front of people. You just have to do it. If you can't do that, it may not be for you. You don't have to use Twitter as a marketing tool. If you can't be relatively consistent in using Twitter then don't waste your time but it is a very powerful tool. If you choose to do that, if it fits you, then go for it. If it doesn't, then don't waste your time by once or twice a week getting on there.
6. Always Be Present. Always reply; always check your direct messages (DMs) throughout the day. Every time you get on twitter, you should always check your DMs and always check your replies. I highly suggest you to use Tweetdeck; it makes this whole process of keeping up with your DMs and your replies easier. If you just use the web interface for twitter, it's too much work trying to keep up with all that stuff. But Tweetdeck makes it a whole lot easier because it keeps track of that stuff right on the screen for you.
7. Be Social. If people re-tweet you, if they have a little re-tweet right in front of your tweet, re-tweet it to their followers. Always thank them, or say something nice to them, reply or add them to your follow Friday list --- something to acknowledge them. Be social, be nice, recognize and appreciate them. Check your daily feed in twitter, look at some people and try to follow people. Whenever you are on twitter, try to always respond to somebody, you have to be social. You will be amazed at the connections and the contacts you'll make if you'll do that.
8. Make "Retweetable" Tweets. Figure out ways to create tweets that will be re-tweeted. Kind of experiment and see what your followers will re-tweet. Remember, once they re-tweet your tweet, then you're showing it to all their followers. Then, some of those followers will re-tweet, and so it just magnifies in it and it's snowball's re-twitter. Different groups will respond differently to different things. So try to work on what your followers will re-tweet, do whatever it takes with your followers. It's very important to spread your account out there. It will really spread like wild fire if you can get 2 to 3 or 4 or 5 re-tweets a day because it adds up.
I do motivational tweets once or twice a day for example, motivational quotes. They always get re-tweeted like hit across twitter. Just things like that and things related to your niche. If you are targeting your followers like I teach you in Twitterblast, you can tweet about your niche. That will get re-tweeted a lot. If you have done your targeting work correctly, that will work really well.
9. Un-follow people who do not follow you. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't give this people a week or so, usually, because some people are not that current. It takes some people time to get up on speed on twitter. If you follow on somebody, and they are not following you in a day or two, well don't just un-follow them then. Give them ample time before you un-follow them because if they are like I was (early on, I signed up last May and I hardly did anything with twitter until November), then you might just un-follow someone who can be worth a good follower. They might be like me in the start, but would later on use twitter a lot, so give people time.
You need to go to your following --- the people that you are following and go into the pages. Go backwards and find that last page where there are people who are not following you. If there is no direct message option, that means they're not following you. So then you un-follow them and you work from the back of your list up. You can stop where you think it's enough, it depends on how many followers you have, but you don't work all the way into the front of your list. You give those people time to follow you. But keep up with that, don't make that drudgery, don't let that get out of hand, where every two or three or four days, go on and un-follow people who aren't following you over time. But like what I've said, do give them time to follow you initially.
10. Tweetdeck. You really need to learn how to use tweetdeck. If you have been using the web interface, and then you try tweetdeck, you will not like it. Most people don't like tweetdeck when they first go to it because its something new and they are not used to it. They are used to using twitter on the web, and it worked and they're just not used to it. It takes time to get used to it. Well, trust me, if you are marketing with twitter, you need tweetdeck because it keeps track of your replies and your DMs right on your screen, and you can delete them in there unlike in the web interface.
11. Tweetlater. Now, there's way to purge your DMs through tweetlater.com (it's free!) There is no easy way to purge your DMs within twitter itself. It's very handy because you don't have to manually delete your messages (that's a pain) and you have an option to delete DMs older than 7 days or 30 days. Keep up with those direct messages and use tweetlater to purge those old direct messages since twitter doesn't have a mechanism for doing that.
12. Auto-follow. A lot of third party tools out there, like tweetlater.com have what they call the auto-follow feature. So you could set that up so that when somebody follows you, your account automatically follows back. Now I do have that set up, and the reason I do (there are pros and cons and I will tell you what they are) is because there are so many people following me that for us to go in I have to follow all those people. It just saves a lot of time in the long run to auto-follow those people.
Now, I'll tell you the down side to that is when you see these porn type scammers out there. These people that you really don't want to associate with, if they follow you, well you're account's going to follow them too. And it looks kind of funky if somebody doesn't understand the process and they come in and look at your account and they see that you are following these porn-looking people. You just have to take the good and the bad there. For us (we've talked about this a lot,) and we think it's better for us if we auto-follow. So kind of do that as you please, as you think and kind of experiment with that. We omit and delete those people if we see them, but there's so many of them, it's hard to do.
13. Tracking Tip. One last little tip that I've started using that's working really well. Tweetdeck has a way that you could follow groups of people but it doesn't work worth anything. It just isn't very good. Well, I will just give you an example of myself in the area of Internet marketing. There are about 20 people that I really want to keep track of, that I want to socialize with a lot, because I can make connections with these people and get to know them. They have big lists and it just works really well if I could get to know these people. Well, it takes a long time to go up into the browser and go to each one of their sites, so here is how I did this and this is a huge piece of advice. You're going to love this.
I use Firefox for my browser, for my normal twitter and everything else. I do not use Internet Explorer very much. But on my computer, I have gone to Internet Explorer and set up another twitter account and I've gone in and follow all those twenty people that I want to keep track of. On my computer, I always have that minimized, I can go to my Internet Explorer and go to that other account and refresh it and I can see what these other 20 people are talking about recently. I can keep track of all twenty people real easy with that other twitter account.
Now, if somebody there says something that I want to respond to, then I go back to Firefox which I am logged in to my regular twitter account, and up in Firefox, I can save (you could use bookmarks or whatever, but I drop them onto the toolbar at the top), I have all twenty of those addresses so I just click that little arrow and all twenty addresses for their twitter home pages drop down. There's each one of their feed and I just click on the one that I want to talk to that I know just tweetered about something. There's their feed and I can hit reply and I can talk to them right there. That works really well.
No matter which niche you're in, no matter which area you are in, you need to seek out those relationships with people who are connected in those same areas as you are and communicate with them and socialize with them. You'll be amazed at the results from doing that alone. It's a little complicated and I wish there was an easier way to do it but that works really well once you begin using that other browser with that other twitter account to follow those specific people that you want to keep track of.
I think that's it for now. That's my top tips for using twitter for your business.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Twitter Marketing - 5 Targeted Techniques to Building Partnerships and Generating Leads on Twitter
Twitter is an unprecedented force in business, in marketing, in popular culture.
Oprah has a Twitter account.
John McCain has a Twitter account.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables you to send and read updates, known as tweets.
It is a communication tool built on answering the simple question: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Twitter's simplicity has been a key to its success. You can contribute to your Twitter status from the Twitter web site, or from one of thousands of 3rd-party web-based tools. You can contribute from your cell phone or PDA.
Twitter's use for business has grown. And 3rd-party tools to facilitate business functions have exploded. But which tools do you use?
To successfully answer that question, let's ask the Twitter question: "What are you doing?"
Or, more directly, "What are you trying to do?"
1. Generate leads: Automatically scheduling your content ahead of time allows you to have a constant participation in the conversations going on on Twitter, without having to check in every day. It ensures that your followers continuously hear from you, and can even follow your links to your content pages, without your constant presence. This automation is critical for business success on Twitter. How does this generate lead for you? Well, you can intersperse tweets about a valuable giveaway on your site. A video, an eBook, some electronic information product. The link in your tweet should point to a lead capture page, where individuals in need of what you're offering will exchange their contact information for what you're offering. Voila! You have a lead generating engine! The larger and more targeted your audience of followers, the more fruitful this can be as a lead engine. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: TweetLater and Twittertise are the two best tools to use for this functionality. I think TweetLater is the better of the two. It is richer and easier to use., If you combine the ability to schedule tweets, with the ability to track the clicks on the URLs in those tweets (see URL-shortening services below), you're really cooking on the Twitter Marketing front.
2. Have conversations with people specifically discussing a need I can meet: As you get more and more followers, it simply becomes impossible to follow all the conversations. Rather than trying to keep track of thousands of conversations, or shutting all the conversations out all-together, you can use the following tools to filter out the noise! Envision it as dipping a cup into the stream, for a drink... rather than dunking your head into the river, and trying to drink. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:TweetDeck:TweetDeck is a standard tool for power Twitter users. It allows you to pay attention to selected users... and selected types of messages. It's like putting blinders on, and only focusing on the targets right in front of you. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: Monitter: Monitter is a browser-based tool that let's you see real-time messages containing whatever keywords you're interested in. While it won't show historical tweets, it will show recent and future tweets for that keyword. You can then jump into conversations with people who are talking about your key subjects . Thus building relationships. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: TweetBeep:TweetBeep, like Monitter, will also track the occurrence of particular keywords. But it adds the additional convenience of emailing you those tweets, or conversations, with your keyword. This makes things even more automated for you. You don't even have to visit Twitter, until you get a TweetBeep about someone discussing your topic! Honorable mention: Search.Twitter.com will do what these other tools do, but in a bit more of a simple fashion. However, the advanced search feature in Search.Twitter.com lets you do some crazy cool things. Like look for tweeters in a particular geographical area! So if you want local leads - here's an option for you.
3. Re-using your existing blog content in Twitter: If you already have content online, you want to expose the new audiences on Twitter to it. Feeding your blog into your Tweet stream is easy with TwitterFeed. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:TwitterFeed.Twitterfeed will syndicate the blog content that you've worked so hard to create, and disseminate it across Twitter. Bringing back traffic to your site.
4. Find business partners Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:Twellow, Twitter.grader.com. Twellow and Twitter.grader.com use different algorithms to show you the top Tweeters for any given keyword. You can then follow those individuals, and strike up conversations with them. Even better, you can find out what they're tweeting about, and seek to add value. If you can position yourself as a valuable resource to them FIRST, you will be able to create a mutually beneficial business relationship.
5. Tracking your outbound links: Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: bit.ly is a URL-shortening tool. Because you're limited to 140- characters in each tweet, long URLs are not practical. While there are many URL-shortening tools out there, TinyURL.com being one of the most popular, bit.ly will keep track of how many clicks you've received for each bit.ly-shortened link. Thus giving you some marketing metrics upon which you can act. Tweetburner is popular in this respect, as well.
So there you have it.
With this particular set of Twitter tools, you can start being an EFFECTIVE Twitter Marketing Guru TODAY. All these tools are 100% free.
Interested in growing your Twitter following, on auto pilot?
In the spirit of automating where possible, the process of getting new followers can be maddeningly manual and time-consuming. Some people will take the initiative to follow you, without prompting. But unless you're a celebrity, or established industry expert already, these numbers won't be enough to feed your marketing funnel.
What you can do to speed that process up, is proactively follow people in your target market. A percentage of them will follow you back. Probably anywhere from 20 - 60%. This is the manual part.
I recently came across a product that automates the process of building your Twitter followers. Automatic Twitter Traffic is a tool you should consider adding to your arsenal... but only after you've exhausted the above free techniques.
You can also learn more about using Social Media Tools to drive your Internet Marketing Strategy in Renegade University.
Oprah has a Twitter account.
John McCain has a Twitter account.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables you to send and read updates, known as tweets.
It is a communication tool built on answering the simple question: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Twitter's simplicity has been a key to its success. You can contribute to your Twitter status from the Twitter web site, or from one of thousands of 3rd-party web-based tools. You can contribute from your cell phone or PDA.
Twitter's use for business has grown. And 3rd-party tools to facilitate business functions have exploded. But which tools do you use?
To successfully answer that question, let's ask the Twitter question: "What are you doing?"
Or, more directly, "What are you trying to do?"
1. Generate leads: Automatically scheduling your content ahead of time allows you to have a constant participation in the conversations going on on Twitter, without having to check in every day. It ensures that your followers continuously hear from you, and can even follow your links to your content pages, without your constant presence. This automation is critical for business success on Twitter. How does this generate lead for you? Well, you can intersperse tweets about a valuable giveaway on your site. A video, an eBook, some electronic information product. The link in your tweet should point to a lead capture page, where individuals in need of what you're offering will exchange their contact information for what you're offering. Voila! You have a lead generating engine! The larger and more targeted your audience of followers, the more fruitful this can be as a lead engine. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: TweetLater and Twittertise are the two best tools to use for this functionality. I think TweetLater is the better of the two. It is richer and easier to use., If you combine the ability to schedule tweets, with the ability to track the clicks on the URLs in those tweets (see URL-shortening services below), you're really cooking on the Twitter Marketing front.
2. Have conversations with people specifically discussing a need I can meet: As you get more and more followers, it simply becomes impossible to follow all the conversations. Rather than trying to keep track of thousands of conversations, or shutting all the conversations out all-together, you can use the following tools to filter out the noise! Envision it as dipping a cup into the stream, for a drink... rather than dunking your head into the river, and trying to drink. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:TweetDeck:TweetDeck is a standard tool for power Twitter users. It allows you to pay attention to selected users... and selected types of messages. It's like putting blinders on, and only focusing on the targets right in front of you. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: Monitter: Monitter is a browser-based tool that let's you see real-time messages containing whatever keywords you're interested in. While it won't show historical tweets, it will show recent and future tweets for that keyword. You can then jump into conversations with people who are talking about your key subjects . Thus building relationships. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: TweetBeep:TweetBeep, like Monitter, will also track the occurrence of particular keywords. But it adds the additional convenience of emailing you those tweets, or conversations, with your keyword. This makes things even more automated for you. You don't even have to visit Twitter, until you get a TweetBeep about someone discussing your topic! Honorable mention: Search.Twitter.com will do what these other tools do, but in a bit more of a simple fashion. However, the advanced search feature in Search.Twitter.com lets you do some crazy cool things. Like look for tweeters in a particular geographical area! So if you want local leads - here's an option for you.
3. Re-using your existing blog content in Twitter: If you already have content online, you want to expose the new audiences on Twitter to it. Feeding your blog into your Tweet stream is easy with TwitterFeed. Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:TwitterFeed.Twitterfeed will syndicate the blog content that you've worked so hard to create, and disseminate it across Twitter. Bringing back traffic to your site.
4. Find business partners Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice:Twellow, Twitter.grader.com. Twellow and Twitter.grader.com use different algorithms to show you the top Tweeters for any given keyword. You can then follow those individuals, and strike up conversations with them. Even better, you can find out what they're tweeting about, and seek to add value. If you can position yourself as a valuable resource to them FIRST, you will be able to create a mutually beneficial business relationship.
5. Tracking your outbound links: Twitter Marketing Tools of Choice: bit.ly is a URL-shortening tool. Because you're limited to 140- characters in each tweet, long URLs are not practical. While there are many URL-shortening tools out there, TinyURL.com being one of the most popular, bit.ly will keep track of how many clicks you've received for each bit.ly-shortened link. Thus giving you some marketing metrics upon which you can act. Tweetburner is popular in this respect, as well.
So there you have it.
With this particular set of Twitter tools, you can start being an EFFECTIVE Twitter Marketing Guru TODAY. All these tools are 100% free.
Interested in growing your Twitter following, on auto pilot?
In the spirit of automating where possible, the process of getting new followers can be maddeningly manual and time-consuming. Some people will take the initiative to follow you, without prompting. But unless you're a celebrity, or established industry expert already, these numbers won't be enough to feed your marketing funnel.
What you can do to speed that process up, is proactively follow people in your target market. A percentage of them will follow you back. Probably anywhere from 20 - 60%. This is the manual part.
I recently came across a product that automates the process of building your Twitter followers. Automatic Twitter Traffic is a tool you should consider adding to your arsenal... but only after you've exhausted the above free techniques.
You can also learn more about using Social Media Tools to drive your Internet Marketing Strategy in Renegade University.
Is Twitter Ready For Prime Time With Small Business?
Calgary based Small Business IT Professional Stuart Crawford thinks so, part of his marketing strategy for 2009 includes leveraging Twitter to reach new markets, inform clients and work in the community.
Twitter is all the rage with those active in the online world. Sending out tweet after tweet, updating their twitter followers regularly on their status, where they are at, what they are doing, where they are going and who they are meeting. The big question that many marketing professionals are asking today is. Can Twitter will be effective as a prime time tool in mainstream marketing.
Twitter has an active role for all small business firms and must be part of their overall marketing strategy. Business has already started to pull away from traditional Yellow Page type advertising and other forms of traditional marketing for their business in return for a more direct and active online marketing campaign. Twitter is playing an active role in the online strategies for many business owners.
Are you still confused about Twitter? Twitter is a very easy to use online service which broadcasts your messages, status updates, web links and other forms of quick and snappy messages to those faithful followers. Twitter is a wonderful example of permission based marketing because those that wish to follow you simply do. Permission based marketing is now the de facto standard, replacing email marketing as spam rules begin to restrict what can and cannot be send by way of email.
If you can't figure it out for yourself there are many consulting and marketing agencies now offering Twitter services to their clients. "We encourage each of them (clients) to have Facebook and Twitter sites and we act as administrators to send "chest pounding" messages about the services/products they provide." states Pauline Harris from SPIN in Baltimore, MD. Her agency acts provides consulting services for business who simply need a firm to keep on top of Twitter.
Twitter broadcasts out a short 140 character message to your followers whenever you have something to say, announce or share. The wonderful thing about Twitter and a long time secret to those Internet Marketing experts who figured this out early, is Twitter is simply a conduit to other great services. Twitter can be used to pull information for your corporate, association or personal blogs, you can use your Smartphone to send Tweets (Tweets are what Twitter users call their messages) or you can type your tweet directly into Twitters online page.
Twitter then will send your message out to your followers and using services built into social networking applications, your message can also be sent out to their services. Twitter is a robust tool to reach thousands of people each day for the cost of your time to develop the content.
Are you still confused about the business benefits to Twitter? You need to look outside of the main Twitter application to see the real value and you also need to deflect the "get rich" type advertising that promises that you will build your followers to several thousand overnight. Many business owners are steering away from the spray and pray approach, electing to hand pick who they follow and in return who follows them.
Effective use of this powerful social networking tool takes careful planning and consideration before true mastery of this marketing tool occurs. Many business owners and entrepreneurs simply stop at the main Twitter website, see a tremendous amount of noise and dismiss it. Twitter is more than an online teleprompter for newsfeeds of those that you follow. If that is how you look at it, then Twitter may not be a tool for your business.
Here are three great tools that you need to have in your Twitter arsenal:
Twitterfeed - Twitterfeed.com is an online solution that provides a mechanism to take your blog posts or any other RSS service and broadcast it out to your Twitter followers and social networking websites including Facebook. If your business has a blog, writes articles or submits news stories to online services, then you must have this solution running to promote the work you are already doing to a bigger audience.
Tweetlater - This nifty application is a handy service for the busy business owner or entrepreneur. With Tweetlater you can leverage this online web solution to schedule your tweets. Simply do up a series of tweets and then have Tweetlater send them out. Tweetlater also allows you to set up policies that allow you to automatically follow those that follow you. It is a karma thing and karma goes a long way in the Twitter world.
TweetBeep - Don't have time to watch Twitter all day or how keeping on top of the people that you follow. With TweetBeep you now can monitor Twitter for keywords and when an item of interest is tweeted it appears in your Inbox. This service even works with shortened URLs. Watch your domain names. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Stay on top of industry trends and so much more.
There are many great online applications available to enhance your Twitter experience, find the one that meets your business needs. Twitter can become very noisy and you will need to find tools that will provide a filter to limit the noise and bring the messages that you want to the foreground.
Twitter when leveraged correctly can bring amazing new business results, connect you with the industry leaders and provide a conduit to share your experiences. Dawn Meade of Advanced Video Systems says "I sought out fellow Twitterers in my field by searching for AV and similar terms, followed several and discovered one to be a staff writer on two industry magazines. Through our Twitter 'friendship' I ended up being interviewed for an article and a sidebar feature on my company!"
Before you dismiss Twitter as just another social online service with no relevance to the business community, do your homework. Twitter can work to help promote your small business to the world or simply your local community. You could learn from the industry leaders.
Relationships are still important in business, either virtual or in person. Take that first step to develop deep and meaningful relationships with others in the business world and allow you to share your insight with the global community.
Twitter is all the rage with those active in the online world. Sending out tweet after tweet, updating their twitter followers regularly on their status, where they are at, what they are doing, where they are going and who they are meeting. The big question that many marketing professionals are asking today is. Can Twitter will be effective as a prime time tool in mainstream marketing.
Twitter has an active role for all small business firms and must be part of their overall marketing strategy. Business has already started to pull away from traditional Yellow Page type advertising and other forms of traditional marketing for their business in return for a more direct and active online marketing campaign. Twitter is playing an active role in the online strategies for many business owners.
Are you still confused about Twitter? Twitter is a very easy to use online service which broadcasts your messages, status updates, web links and other forms of quick and snappy messages to those faithful followers. Twitter is a wonderful example of permission based marketing because those that wish to follow you simply do. Permission based marketing is now the de facto standard, replacing email marketing as spam rules begin to restrict what can and cannot be send by way of email.
If you can't figure it out for yourself there are many consulting and marketing agencies now offering Twitter services to their clients. "We encourage each of them (clients) to have Facebook and Twitter sites and we act as administrators to send "chest pounding" messages about the services/products they provide." states Pauline Harris from SPIN in Baltimore, MD. Her agency acts provides consulting services for business who simply need a firm to keep on top of Twitter.
Twitter broadcasts out a short 140 character message to your followers whenever you have something to say, announce or share. The wonderful thing about Twitter and a long time secret to those Internet Marketing experts who figured this out early, is Twitter is simply a conduit to other great services. Twitter can be used to pull information for your corporate, association or personal blogs, you can use your Smartphone to send Tweets (Tweets are what Twitter users call their messages) or you can type your tweet directly into Twitters online page.
Twitter then will send your message out to your followers and using services built into social networking applications, your message can also be sent out to their services. Twitter is a robust tool to reach thousands of people each day for the cost of your time to develop the content.
Are you still confused about the business benefits to Twitter? You need to look outside of the main Twitter application to see the real value and you also need to deflect the "get rich" type advertising that promises that you will build your followers to several thousand overnight. Many business owners are steering away from the spray and pray approach, electing to hand pick who they follow and in return who follows them.
Effective use of this powerful social networking tool takes careful planning and consideration before true mastery of this marketing tool occurs. Many business owners and entrepreneurs simply stop at the main Twitter website, see a tremendous amount of noise and dismiss it. Twitter is more than an online teleprompter for newsfeeds of those that you follow. If that is how you look at it, then Twitter may not be a tool for your business.
Here are three great tools that you need to have in your Twitter arsenal:
Twitterfeed - Twitterfeed.com is an online solution that provides a mechanism to take your blog posts or any other RSS service and broadcast it out to your Twitter followers and social networking websites including Facebook. If your business has a blog, writes articles or submits news stories to online services, then you must have this solution running to promote the work you are already doing to a bigger audience.
Tweetlater - This nifty application is a handy service for the busy business owner or entrepreneur. With Tweetlater you can leverage this online web solution to schedule your tweets. Simply do up a series of tweets and then have Tweetlater send them out. Tweetlater also allows you to set up policies that allow you to automatically follow those that follow you. It is a karma thing and karma goes a long way in the Twitter world.
TweetBeep - Don't have time to watch Twitter all day or how keeping on top of the people that you follow. With TweetBeep you now can monitor Twitter for keywords and when an item of interest is tweeted it appears in your Inbox. This service even works with shortened URLs. Watch your domain names. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Stay on top of industry trends and so much more.
There are many great online applications available to enhance your Twitter experience, find the one that meets your business needs. Twitter can become very noisy and you will need to find tools that will provide a filter to limit the noise and bring the messages that you want to the foreground.
Twitter when leveraged correctly can bring amazing new business results, connect you with the industry leaders and provide a conduit to share your experiences. Dawn Meade of Advanced Video Systems says "I sought out fellow Twitterers in my field by searching for AV and similar terms, followed several and discovered one to be a staff writer on two industry magazines. Through our Twitter 'friendship' I ended up being interviewed for an article and a sidebar feature on my company!"
Before you dismiss Twitter as just another social online service with no relevance to the business community, do your homework. Twitter can work to help promote your small business to the world or simply your local community. You could learn from the industry leaders.
Relationships are still important in business, either virtual or in person. Take that first step to develop deep and meaningful relationships with others in the business world and allow you to share your insight with the global community.
How to Use Twitter to Connect With Customers
The "micro-blogging" service Twitter has become more mainstream since the company's inception in 2006. Twitter users now number well into the millions, with no signs of slowing growth. While Twitter is most popular on the West Coast, users are spreading rapidly throughout the world. Companies are finding many creative ways to use Twitter to benefit their businesses: to run promotions, provide high-quality customer service, get product feedback, manage their brands and perform market research.
Promotions
Many companies are using Twitter as a means of rolling out cheap but effective promotions. One such company, Whole Foods Market, is using Twitter heavily to connect with customers. Whole Foods' Twitter account has become a valuable way for the company to market specific products and boost store sales.
Whole Foods runs a weekly Twitter promotion where they "Tweet" (or send) a pass phrase and a specific store location; the first 5 people who go to that location and give the password receive a $25 store gift. Another way to earn a $25 gift certificate is the "Tweet of the Day". Whole Foods monitors all of the Tweets about them using the Twitter search tool. Each day, the Tweet that was particularly funny or interesting wins the prize, with the Twitter user receiving a direct message alerting them that they have won.
At this time Whole Foods has more than 2,900 followers on Twitter.I believe that Twitter is a great place for larger companies to market their products and interact with customers because their customers are actively seeking it. Whole Foods' thousands of followers have made the conscious decision to follow Whole Foods on Twitter. They want to know what is going on and what is new at Whole Foods. It's like signing up for an e-mail newsletter, but people are more apt to simply follow someone on Twitter because it doesn't fill up their inbox. And if they have a question, they can get a personal response as opposed to a stale e-mail reply.
Personally, during a recent salmonella poisoning scare in Georgia, I direct-messaged Whole Foods and asked what they were doing to help protect against the problem in their stores. I received a direct response three hours later. What a great customer service experience! They provided exactly the information I was looking for and displayed the power of reaching out to customers.
Customer Service
Many businesses are adopting Twitter as a means of providing customer service. On the flip side, consumers are finding that, often, Twitter is the best way to communicate with large companies whose customer service tends to lack at times. Comcast, for instance, is having success using Twitter to better address their customers' concerns and issues. The most famous situation involves Comcast and TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington. Frustrated that his service had been out for hours, Arrington eventually lost his cool and began angrily Twittering his frustrations. Within 20 minutes he was contacted by a Twitter executive and his problem was resolved. It is true that Arrington is an influential person and this could have helped his cause, but every day Comcast is helping plenty of lesser-known customers, as well. Comcast reports that they receive millions of calls a day from customers looking for help.
Conversely, the 10-member Comcast team that manages Twitter and other social networks helps about 100 customers a day. Consequently, the Comcast reps managing their Twitter account are able to address the problem better and give a quick solution.Other large companies are also using Twitter to addressing customer service issues, including Southwest Air, Home Depot and Dell. Are your customers on Twitter? If you operate on the West Coast, the chances are yes. If not or if you don't know, go to the Twitter search tool and type in your company's name and products.
Maybe some potential customers are out there. Try searching for some of the services you provide. If you find some people out in the Twitter universe talking about your company or services, join the conversation and just watch how much they appreciate the personal contact.
Brand Management and Market Research
What if finding out what your customers are saying about your service or product was as easy as typing in your company name or product into a search bar? Once you searched, you were met with real customers talking in real time about your company and products. With Twitter, this is possible. Using the search tool, you can search all the Tweets made by every user in the Twitter network in real time. This can be a powerful way for your company to leverage your brand online. Imagine rolling out a new product and seeing in real time how it is being received by the public.
You can see what they are saying. If your customers are having any problems, you will know right away and can send them a message as to how best solve their issues. You can even set up a personalized system to alert you via e-mail if someone Tweets about your company using Tweet Scan.Want to find out what people are saying about the competition? Use the same search tools to type in your competitors' names and see if there might be something you could use to your advantage. Find out what people like or don't like about their products or services. Discover what their customers really like and consider implementing it yourself. Even if you can't find someone talking about your company or services today, they likely will be in the future. Your company needs to be prepared for the day when Twitter is used even more widely. I would strongly encourage you to go to Twitter and at least sign-up your company with a handle (Twitter account name) that will protect your brand in the future. When creating your account, you can even modify your account page to have the same feel and color scheme as your website. You wouldn't want someone to use your company's name as their handle and spread bad or unauthorized information as Twitter grows.
Promotions
Many companies are using Twitter as a means of rolling out cheap but effective promotions. One such company, Whole Foods Market, is using Twitter heavily to connect with customers. Whole Foods' Twitter account has become a valuable way for the company to market specific products and boost store sales.
Whole Foods runs a weekly Twitter promotion where they "Tweet" (or send) a pass phrase and a specific store location; the first 5 people who go to that location and give the password receive a $25 store gift. Another way to earn a $25 gift certificate is the "Tweet of the Day". Whole Foods monitors all of the Tweets about them using the Twitter search tool. Each day, the Tweet that was particularly funny or interesting wins the prize, with the Twitter user receiving a direct message alerting them that they have won.
At this time Whole Foods has more than 2,900 followers on Twitter.I believe that Twitter is a great place for larger companies to market their products and interact with customers because their customers are actively seeking it. Whole Foods' thousands of followers have made the conscious decision to follow Whole Foods on Twitter. They want to know what is going on and what is new at Whole Foods. It's like signing up for an e-mail newsletter, but people are more apt to simply follow someone on Twitter because it doesn't fill up their inbox. And if they have a question, they can get a personal response as opposed to a stale e-mail reply.
Personally, during a recent salmonella poisoning scare in Georgia, I direct-messaged Whole Foods and asked what they were doing to help protect against the problem in their stores. I received a direct response three hours later. What a great customer service experience! They provided exactly the information I was looking for and displayed the power of reaching out to customers.
Customer Service
Many businesses are adopting Twitter as a means of providing customer service. On the flip side, consumers are finding that, often, Twitter is the best way to communicate with large companies whose customer service tends to lack at times. Comcast, for instance, is having success using Twitter to better address their customers' concerns and issues. The most famous situation involves Comcast and TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington. Frustrated that his service had been out for hours, Arrington eventually lost his cool and began angrily Twittering his frustrations. Within 20 minutes he was contacted by a Twitter executive and his problem was resolved. It is true that Arrington is an influential person and this could have helped his cause, but every day Comcast is helping plenty of lesser-known customers, as well. Comcast reports that they receive millions of calls a day from customers looking for help.
Conversely, the 10-member Comcast team that manages Twitter and other social networks helps about 100 customers a day. Consequently, the Comcast reps managing their Twitter account are able to address the problem better and give a quick solution.Other large companies are also using Twitter to addressing customer service issues, including Southwest Air, Home Depot and Dell. Are your customers on Twitter? If you operate on the West Coast, the chances are yes. If not or if you don't know, go to the Twitter search tool and type in your company's name and products.
Maybe some potential customers are out there. Try searching for some of the services you provide. If you find some people out in the Twitter universe talking about your company or services, join the conversation and just watch how much they appreciate the personal contact.
Brand Management and Market Research
What if finding out what your customers are saying about your service or product was as easy as typing in your company name or product into a search bar? Once you searched, you were met with real customers talking in real time about your company and products. With Twitter, this is possible. Using the search tool, you can search all the Tweets made by every user in the Twitter network in real time. This can be a powerful way for your company to leverage your brand online. Imagine rolling out a new product and seeing in real time how it is being received by the public.
You can see what they are saying. If your customers are having any problems, you will know right away and can send them a message as to how best solve their issues. You can even set up a personalized system to alert you via e-mail if someone Tweets about your company using Tweet Scan.Want to find out what people are saying about the competition? Use the same search tools to type in your competitors' names and see if there might be something you could use to your advantage. Find out what people like or don't like about their products or services. Discover what their customers really like and consider implementing it yourself. Even if you can't find someone talking about your company or services today, they likely will be in the future. Your company needs to be prepared for the day when Twitter is used even more widely. I would strongly encourage you to go to Twitter and at least sign-up your company with a handle (Twitter account name) that will protect your brand in the future. When creating your account, you can even modify your account page to have the same feel and color scheme as your website. You wouldn't want someone to use your company's name as their handle and spread bad or unauthorized information as Twitter grows.
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