The Basics of Twitter Marketing

Twitter: technically known as a micro blog, twitter allows a person to send a brief 140 character text message to a list of followers, and can include a hypertext link and more recently photos.

Twitter was originally designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed of your movements, emotions and challenges throughout the day. This simplistic tool soon gained infamy in urban myth after its launch in 2006 of being pointless as nobody is interested that you have just use the toilet.

Twitter very soon became widely used by celebrities, corporate and politicians keeping people informed of developments or general updates as well as encouraging feedback from their followers. News organisations soon tapped into the potential of the general public alerting them to newsworthy events as they unfolded.

Because of the omnipresent nature of twitter today newsworthy events often break on the social media site first, such as the death of Osama bin Laden, Arab spring and a variety of natural disasters.

Partly due to the limited nature of 140 characters twitter serves as a self filter for customers to feedback to companies their feelings or experiences. Additionally twitter is a dream for advertisers who need swift feedback and crowd control trend data.

Twitter serves as an excellent opportunity to advertise your business hours, locations, new items, promotions, and customer feedback. The conversationalist tennis type back and forth engagement with customers can be invaluable for some brands, but not always to all, so you have to be selective and clever in its use. Best of all, Twitter, like Facebook are free and the only real investment cost is time.

If used creatively and in an informative way it makes it a great tool to perform market research. Think of Twitter as a sort of electronic word of mouth. Additionally there also the benefits of linking up with or starting trends by using hashtag additions, something that Facebook has now started to implement.

With thanks to Marketo (marketo.com) and their Twitter CheatSheet

Tips to Make Your Tweets Engaging and Easy for a Follower to Retweet:

• • Always use a URL shortener like Bit.ly. They are also often built into other tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. You only have 140 characters, so make it count!
  • Keep tweets below 140 characters, ideally under 100 characters. It makes retweeting easier to do.
  • The symbol # on Twitter is known as a hashtag. These tags are used to affiliate a tweet with a certain topic and can be useful for tracking social marketing campaigns and connecting with customers. You can develop your own hashtags to try and promote a viral following for a specific topic or campaign.
  • Avoid the temptation to use tools that send automatic direct messages. These types of messages are often construed as spam and may cause people to “unfollow” you.
  • You can also engage Twitter followers and influencers by including a @mention in your tweets. You can do this when you post content you think will resonate with an influencer. An easy format to follow is tweeting with a link to relevant content and then including the @mention at the end of the tweet.
  • Use Twitter lists to segment users by interest or group together brand advocates and your favorite twitter users. Keep in mind that when you add a user to a public list they are notified and the list is open and searchable to all users. A private list, which may be used for competitors, is only visible to you.
  • Use Twitter during events and to promote things like contests. A great way to engage your Twitter followers is to create a contest that asks followers to contribute in some way you want your Twitter feed to be a mix of Tweets you’ve created, as well as replies and retweets.

TopTip #11 – Tell Your Story

Tell your story through your twitter account. This will greatly influence the response of other people to you.  Also, by setting up your account properly, your followers will be able to identify your company brand apart from your competitors. The name and the image that you choose must be consistent with your other profiles which have been set up on a different medium and it should also be easily associated with your company’s identity.

TopTip #12 – Find an Effective Strategy

After setting up an account, you also have to make sure that you have a good marketing strategy in place. This is very important if you wish to make the most out of this particular social networking site. Your strategy must include the way you can acquire followers, who will you follow, how often you will be posting, what type of content you will be posting and several others.

TopTip #13 – Share Interesting Topics

With twitter, users are provided an easier way to share topics which they find interesting. This is one of the main reasons why so many individuals love this networking site.  Make use of the 140 character description properly by creating a catchy statement which would draw in the interest of your followers.

TopTip #14 – Go Follow Others

You must choose the people that you want to follow because once you do, you will be reading whatever posts they share.  Go slow when doing this since Twitter has rigid guidelines when it comes to excessive following and they suspend accounts once they find it as suspicious. You can follow your clients, contractors, suppliers and other individuals within your professional network.

TopTip #15 – Find the Sweet Spot

You can do this by finding what your target clients need. You can also concentrate on informing them how your products and services would benefit your prospective customers. This is commonly known as the sweet spot of all consumers. Provide a solution to their problems or answer their questions and you will be considered as worth following by other members.

TopTip #16 – Start Tweeting Smartly

Learn how to post in Twitter. This aspect is very important knowing for a fact that you are only allowed to have a micro blog which is 140 characters long. Try out different ways of writing the post before actually posting it.  Create interesting posts which will draw in other users to actually read what you have just posted.

TopTip #17 – Connect the Dots

It is very important to connect your twitter account to your actual business website. This social networking site offers an option wherein you can simply add your website to your twitter account. You can also make use of their widget which will allow you to share your tweet timeline to your business website.  By doing so, your website visitors will be able to view your actual conversations in twitter. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone. Lastly, add a twitter button to your site so that your website visitors can share the content of your website to their twitter account.

TopTip #18 – Make Use of Great Snapshots

Twitter also allows photo sharing on their networking site. You can post snapshots of important events which took place in your company.

TopTip #19 – Measure It Out

It is also vital to measure how your twitter marketing strategy is going. It is a must on every marketing process to find out the efficiency of the implemented plan. Through this, you will be able to make the needed improvements so that you will be able to hit your desired targets.

TopTip #20 – Promote Your Twitter

Lastly on twitter’s tips and tricks, you also have to promote your twitter account. You can include this in your website’s main page or contact page. You can include this on your email signature and even promote it on other social networking sites.