14 April 2014
With over half a billion registered users and 135,000 new users signing up every day, the reach of Twitter as a content sharing platform offers mind boggling possibilities for marketers. But it isn’t just about the numbers.
The kind of interaction that Twitter promotes is akin to word of mouth marketing and personalized interactions that form the foundation for the success of every small business.
Let’s face it. If you’re a small or medium sized business, you don’t have either the time or the funds to splurge on elaborate marketing campaigns.
Enter social media. You now have a range of free options to spread the word about your brand and best of all – letting others to do it for you. And, micro-blogging as a broadcast medium is the best pick for a business to stay on its audience’s radar without investing a lot of time
Here are the main USPs of Twitter:
Real time communication: Twitter is always on and is ideal for access from cell phones, laptops, tablets etc. Users check for Tweets at home, while at work and on the go. Texts shared on Twitter have a 140-character limit making this a quick and easy platform for immediate interaction with an audience. Know which user is talking about your business and connect with them in real time. Track the trends prevailing in the industry through ongoing conversations and check out what your competitors are up to.
Strengthening customer relationships: Twitter is an increasingly popular platform being used by consumers for resolution of issues because they feel confident of their voice being heard. As such, Twitter is a great platform for managing customer relationships and promoting brand loyalty. For small and medium businesses, this personal touch goes a long way towards customer retention and better management of their leads. So, a timely response to a customer’s comment is invaluable.
Engagement and exposure: The 140 character limit can be both a challenge and a blessing. The challenge is to keep your posts brief and informative at the same time. But if you are successful in pulling it off, you can find multiple ways to entice users to click on URLs and drive traffic to your website, blog or sales pages. Tweets reach those people who don’t have the time to read a long and detailed post of over 500 words. More importantly, a mini-post of 140 characters or a video or photo is easy to re-tweet or share on other social media platforms, thus amplifying your message.
Perhaps the most important selling point of using Twitter for marketing is the type of content shared. While most people log on to Facebook to share their personal updates and photographs, Twitter is about sharing the latest news, information and opinions.
So you’re less likely to be wading through selfies and photographs of people’s pets and more likely to come across more users following and talking about brands or relevant industry subjects.
But leveraging this leading micro-blogging network as a marketing tool isn’t as simple as just joining the sea of 645 million plus users. If you want to invest some of valuable time on Twitter marketing, there are some important points to keep in mind.
Twitter serves a wide variety of business objectives from tracking potential leads to enhancing brand awareness to strengthening customer loyalty to even job recruitments. It’s important to set your priorities right, so that you can evaluate the results of your Twitter marketing strategy in the right context.
Some opine that Twitter is more effective for increasing loyalty amongst existing customers through responsive customer service as opposed to generating brand awareness. So define your expectations right at the outset.
Your Twitter profile is a reflection of your company’s image. So, the first step is to go with a clear, friendly profile picture. While company logos are popular choices as profile photos, it is important to remember that audiences connect better with a human face and voice.
Small and medium businesses are all about the personal, human touch so it may be a better choice to have a nice, open, smiling photograph of the team.
An informative and well structured bio gives people who don’t know you more of an incentive to follow you. Since you’re representing a brand image here, make sure you maintain a consistent Twitter profile and don’t make too many changes on a regular basis.
Decide what image you want to project and stick to it. Come up with a unique and catchy hashtag that you can use to track who is talking about your brand.
Discounts and promotions: Twitter’s a great forum to announce limited discounts, sales and product launches. An exclusive Twitter only sale can create a lot of buzz.
Online clothes retailer Bonobos had great success with a Twitter exclusive sale and they effectively built up to the sales announcement through teasers and follow up comments.
Get into Content Curation: While Twitter is a great forum to promote one’s brand name, it is important to balance the promotional content with other relevant content that may not directly be linked to your brand. Track what topics are trending amongst your followers and share relevant content from reputed sources that they would find interesting.
Remember that the guy who only knows how to talk about himself isn’t going to win any popularity contests. Share content that starts a conversation amongst your audience, whether it is industry news or other topics of interest.
Strengthen your credibility as a thought leader by participating in discussions on issues affecting your line of business or industry and sharing informative articles that shape the discourse.
Users follow brands for discounts, promos and freebies, for access to exclusive content, and for entertainment. So have a balanced content strategy that includes these elements.
Share tweets and blog posts by Twitter users and mention their handles in your timeline to encourage their originality and to get their attention eventually.
Twitter enforces brevity with its strict 140-character limit. If brevity is the soul of your wit, use it to share links accompanied by short and snappy text that catches the reader’s eye and entices him to click on your link.
Remember, spelling, grammar and punctuation should be flawless. Try and stick to a 120-character limit (including the link) to allow space for easy re-tweeting because people won’t really bother to edit or shorten otherwise.
It’s not as easy to find and connect with professionals and decision makers as it is in LinkedIn. Nor does it has the significant SEO or the visibility potential like Google+ with its authorship feature. That shouldn’t stop you from building a strong network of peers though.
You can start with including friends, co-workers, clients and other close associates in your Twitter network. Promote your Twitter handle through your website, blog or e-mailers that you send out.
Find interesting people to follow that are likely to follow you back. Use the keyword search tool or the Twitter ‘Lists’ feature which allows you to find user lists based on a particular topic. Third party services such as WeFollow, Twellow also help you find relevant Twitter users.
Amongst your followers, track down the most influential ones (that may have large numbers of followers of their own). The influencers are the ones to target in terms of tailoring your content so that it is likely to be shared by them.
Target the right audience based on keywords and hashtags used in their tweets, which when tracked diligently, will give you an idea of their interests.
Use a content calendar to schedule your tweets and maintain regularity. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are two such Twitter management applications that make it easy for you to set your tweets to be published at scheduled times.
But, always track current sentiment as well as your own business environment to ensure that no tweet, that you scheduled weeks ago and forgot about, appears at an ill timed moment – like Qantas’ Twitter competition, which was scheduled in the midst of a contract negotiation breakdown between Qantas and its unions.
Never Miss the Real time opportunities
While it’s good to have a planned schedule of tweets, it is equally vital to track opportunities to participate in real time conversations that are relevant to your business. Use keyword search tools to find out who is talking about your brand or company and contribute to those discussions.
Search which hashtags are trending on Twitter and use the relevant ones in your tweets to participate in discussions around a particular event or issue that might be related to your products or services. Using a hashtag that’s trending in your tweet ensures that you reach a broader audience.
Also keep an eye out for customer service inquiries or complaints and respond to those immediately. When you keeps your ears open, you stand to generate more demand.
Twitter is a great platform for strengthening brand loyalty by being responsive to a customers comments and complaints. Be sure to utilize the opportunity to position yourself as a customer centric business.
Use the various tools available to track the popularity or reach of your content. There are analytics like Social Crawlytics, Social Bro among others, which gives you information on the popularity of your own account as well as that of your competitors.
Another tool such as Simply Measured lets you measure the engagement levels of your tweets while Followerwonk lets you find influencers with social authority on Twitter.
Many of these tools offer base reports for free and you can always look into a detailed paid set of analytics to help you align your content strategy. Also, make it a habit to a digital marketing audit and put these numbers to better use.
One thing to keep in mind is to ensure that your Twitter strategy is in line with your overall content strategy, which includes other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+. The impact of your marketing efforts will be that much better if it is part of a cohesive whole.
Twitter is undoubtedly the leading network for micro-blogging and can have a significant and measurable impact on lead generation as well as enhanced sales for a small and medium sized firm.
The returns from this cost effective medium can be really worthwhile if you use it right. So, are you ready to add these tips to your online marketing checklist?
