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Twitter – An Integral Part of Your Marketing
Campaign
Seeing the recent boom in popularity of Twitter, I feel it’s
important to have a look at it from a business standpoint.
Acknowledging all the possibilities of this new form of
communication is critical for efficiently utilizing all the
possibilities Twitter offers to businesses.
Tweeting is a relatively new concept of “micro-blogging" - posting
very short updates, comments or thoughts. In fact, since Twitter was
designed to be compatible with mobile phones through text messages,
each update is limited to only 140 characters. Another way to
perceive Twitter is like a cross between instant messaging and a
chat room - it is an open forum formed by the web of your followers
and the accounts you follow.
Utilizing Twitter to the fullest.
As you may know, social media is a great way to have a conversation
with your market, as well as form and mange connections with
prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers. But for a CEO,
the regular means of connecting via social media is somewhat
difficult, especially if you’re a larger company. A CEO rarely has
the time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend
requests on Facebook. I cannot tell you how many company blogs I
have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to
update the blog after the first couple entries.
Twitter, however, enable you to connect “on-the-go”. As the messages
are limited to 140 characters per update, it is all about short
thoughts and comments. If your CEO can send a text message, they can
use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool.
Twitter is actually perfect for the kind of a busy CEO or founder
who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some
interesting opinions on your market. And using Twitter marketing
tools – applications designed for companies – you can easily track
and analyze the information you’re interested in. Below are five
things you can and should do with Twitter:
1. Keep in touch with bloggers/media. Twitter may very well be the
most convenient way of staying connected with the public. In my
opinion, there is no easier way to connect with influential people
than by following their Twitter accounts, and having them follow
back. This way, you can form a more direct connection than by emails
or the phone.
2. Monitor your company/brand on Twitter. Using Twitter
marketing tools to screen mentions of your business can be a
huge asset in your marketing efforts. A while back we noticed that
Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter. Well, of course we
had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if
he would also blog about it! The result was this blog article on
Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.
3. Announce specials, deals or sales. If you are a retailer or
anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter
marketing tools to announce these deals instantly to a large
audience. You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about
that "Ding" application you could download and would then alert you
about specials on flights? Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of
free version of that. Dell and Woot have done just this type of
marketing, with great success.
4. Post live updates on events and conferences. While participating
in a large trade show or running your own corporate event, you can
use Twitter to announce last minute changes or update your followers
on the latest happenings ("Just announced, David Meerman Scott book
signing in the exhibit hall until 11am"). In this sense, Twitter is
a great last minute marketing tool.
5. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more. Using
Twitter marketing tools, posting links and directing people’s
attention to blog and news articles is easy and very convenient. A
good idea is to tie Twitter to your other online marketing efforts,
interchanging links to each other whenever possible. If you have
other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar,
post links to those too!
Twitter could very well have the highest gain/cost ratio of all
marketing tools known to this day. In fact, the only thing you’re
spending is time, while in return you receive a convenient way to
connect to thousands of people – instantly and directly!
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