Successful Marketing Tips for Twitter

Amplify’d from www.graphicsms.com

Twitter – Dos and Donts for Successful Marketing Twitter is no longer used predominantly as a means to answer the question “What are you doing?” Like many new online application websites and social communities, most tend to be defined by the people who use it. It can be a way to share links, ideas, news, multimedia, and more. In marketing terms, Twitter requires you to build and maintain your community of Followers in order to see any value from it. Simply put, the more you put into Twitter, the more you can get out of it. Since it’s one of the top social networking websites in existence, it’s a safe bet that using it to help promote your will return positive results. So to start, I would like to cover a few do’s and don’ts. 1) DO: Content Posting Post valuable content regularly. While this document will show you how to automate your content posting, make sure you use it and make it personalized every now and then. Remind your viewers that you’re not a robot, and that you do participate from time to time. DON’T: Post Irrelevant Content Do not post messages about standing in line waiting for your order at a restaurant, or any other trivial and personal data that would otherwise be considered irrelevant. While yes, you can treat Twitter as your personal blog, and make it your own daily journal, but it doesn’t provide any value to your followers. Also, consider each Tweet a 5 second marketing opportunity (or a Commercial). Are you going to spend that commercial providing value to your viewers, or are you going to talk about yourself and disclose information that is only interesting to you? 2) DO: Send Re-tweets Re-tweet valuable posts by your followers several times per week. DON’T: Manipulate or Deceive Do not re-tweet someone else’s posts and then change the link to whatever you like. I had one of my followers try that, and when I viewed the link, it was a completely different site. I immediately unfollowed and blocked that person for their actions. Expect others to do the same. Also, try to avoid any abuse through the use of link shortening. While they do make it useful for posting long links with character restrictive sites like Twitter, they are often times abused by many users because of its “disguised” appearance. 3) DO: Establish Credibility Post messages about your company, and establish your expertise by providing it freely to your viewers. Provide general feedback, advice, and answer questions about topics surrounding your profession. The more credible you appear, the more likely people will want to do business with you. DON’T: Talk Only About Yourself Don’t sit there all day and post messages solely about yourself or your company. While it may be relevant to you, it may not be to your viewers. Keep in mind how easy it is for someone to simply unfollow or block your account. If you space out your marketing posts and mix in some value posts throughout the day, you should be fine. 4) DO: Communicate Encourage others to carry a conversation with you over Twitter. The communication aspect of Twitter is what makes it so valuable. It is the perfect lead-in to any situation. DON’T: Carry Conversations Publicly Do not carry all of your conversations over the public timeline. Take it to Direct Messages. The first or second reply to a public inquiry is fine, but anything more and it can start to appear intrusive on other followers. Keep in mind, each follower has their own public timeline, and may have no idea who or what you’re talking about when you’re carrying on a public conversation. 5) DO: Make Offline Contact Encourage people to contact you when the opportunity presents itself. Twitter is great for the Lead-In, but it quickly becomes very restrictive for conversation. DON’T: Post Sensitive Material In Publicly Do not post your email address or any personal or private data about yourself of your company in the public timeline. If you have to give someone your email address or any other private data, do it over Direct Message. If you receive the alert “User is not following you” while attempting to Direct Message someone, request that the user follow you in order for you to send them important information. 6) DO: Use Trends “Follow Friday” is one example of a Twitter trend. In order to “use” Follow Friday (and other Twitter trends) correctly, you first have to know what it is. Every Friday, the people of Twitter share with each other the people that they wish to recommend that other people follow. It’s a great way to show appreciation to a select group of users, and it may get them a few new followers in return. The way to use Follow Friday is to start a new Tweet. Then, there are two different ways you can send the message. The first method is to use the @ symbol along with a person’s username (ie: @chicagodesign), and then do this for each profile you wish to include in a Follow Friday post. You can click on “reply” inside of HootSuite to add that users name to your Follow Friday post. After you have your list of Follow Friday friends, you’re going to have to add the Hash Tag # symbol and the trend term “FF” or “followfriday” to the post (ie: “A shout out to my #ff friends @chicagodesign, @graphicsms, @tweetro”). The # symbol tells twitter that the information you are assigning that symbol to is important. Twitter automatically creates a hyperlink from anything that contains the # symbol. They do so to make that content searchable, and so that others can find and monitor that trend. The “@” symbol before a username indicates that this message will be sent as a reply or mention to the username used. Normally, you will only be replying or mentioning one person at a time. However, the Follow Friday technique allows you to include multiple users at once, increasing the visibility of that Tweet. The following websites seem to be the best available for finding trends: http://twopular.com http://www.twitscoop.com/ DON’T: Abuse Trends Do not get carried away with Trend-Tweeting or overusing multiple @ replies or mentions. They can easily be used (and also viewed) as a spam device, so be careful of how you use it. For Follow Friday’s, I usually create about 2-3 Tweets that contain the users I wish to promote. Any more than that, and it starts to look like you are deliberately adding people to lists for marketing purposes. 2-3 trend tweets per day should be sufficient to use it effectively. Read more at www.graphicsms.com

 

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