Tools to Maximize Your Social Marketing Efforts on Twitter
Twitter Tools
Tools to maximize social marketing efforts on Twitter.
There are all kinds of analogies I could use here but since I was born and raised in Oregon logging country, this is the one that immediately jumps to mind.
Trying to do social marketing on Twitter without the proper tools is like trying to cut down a giant redwood with a pen knife rather than with a two man chain saw.
Now for all you tree huggers out there…don’t get your panties in a knot…it’s only an analogy…I’m not really going to cut down a giant redwood. Earl Gibbons ate enough of them all by himself.
Twitter Search
As you know, Twitter has become many things to many people. What you may not know is this; corporations are even using Twitter to help with customer service.
Companies are able to tune into consumers discussing their products through Twitter. Twitter Search allows anyone to monitor keywords and key phrases, including your company name, to find out what people are tweeting about. Imagine the value of this ability to instantly take the pulse of a good cross section of their consumer base. Corporations normally would pay enormous amounts of money to gain this information.
If you are an internet marketer you can also use Twitter Search to monitor key words and phrases in your own niche. Then it would behoove you to follow those who have a similar interest.
The more people you add to your network the more people will be able to see your tweets, the more people who see your tweets the more click-through you will get to your blog or website. So add a lot of friends and continue to look for more followers
Setting up Automation Tools will save you precious time!
There are a few different tools that you absolutely must set up with your Twitter account before you start marketing. These automation tools will save you a lot of time, and allow you to tie your Twitter account to other social networking sites.
Tweetlater
Hey Rockin Robbin, tweet…tweet
Tweet from the treetops all night long Rockin and Boppin and singin this song…and all day too. TweetLater is a tool that allows you to post tweets even if you are not in front of your PC… without typing the tweet on your PDA or on your mobile.
You will use TweetLater to post your tweets for you all day and all night. You will be able to make tweets for future posting. With TweetLater, you can set up your Twitter account to auto message people who follow you with a personal message such as “thank you for following me, check out my blog at [http://www....].”. It will seem more personal but you won’t have to do it yourself!
As a marketer, you have to acknowledge the power of reaching out to your audience. So the more consistently and the more personally that you reach out to them, the more they will gravitate towards your business. Having a
TweetLater account ensures that your audience will regularly be reminded of you. It is definitely a good idea to inform your audience more and more about your business.
Out of sight…Out of mind.
Nowadays everything is instant gratification, from mobile email to micro-waved nuclear nugget meals. Everyone wants it now and if they don’t see it…they forget it. It’s tough even to take a vacation without losing some of your business due to the lack of that daily connecting with your audience. With TweetLater, you will avoid this unfortunate occurrence. As you take a week off from your marketing tasks, the automated portion of your business will keep on working for you.
Twirl
A small pop up window that will allow you to see your twitter feed live on your desktop called Twhirl is one of the first things you will want to download. This fantastic tool allows you to ‘Tweet’ and receive Tweets directly to and from your desktop. This saves you having to log into Twitter.com each time you feel a tweet coming on.
Twhirl connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts and you can cross-post your updates to Jaiku and many other sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more via Ping.fm
This is a must have tool if you want to succeed using Twitter for marketing.
You can find Twhirl at http://www.twhirl.org Just follow the instructions for downloading the software.
Follow Guru’s in Your Niche
You should find several people in your niche who are popular and follow all of their followers. This is easy to do. Just go to their profile and click on followers. As you go down the list you will see whether you are already following them or not. If it says follow under their picture…you aren’t following them…just click on that follow sign and you will be…following them.
The guru’s will post content that their followers find valuable.
Filter out the good content, and then post it to your followers. This will make it easy for you to post great content for your followers & have them respect you as an authority in your niche (make sure you give credit for the source of the material unless you totally re-write it).
So those are some of the keys to Twitter success. Now let’s get down to the real nitty gritty…the most important aspect of your Twitter campaign.
How to build a huge army of followers.
Note: Twitter will only allow you to follow 2000 people, until you have 2000 followers. There’s a way to deal with this temporary setback that we will cover in this next section.
Twitter Friend Adder
Ok, now I am going to share with you a tool, which can totally automate the process of following people. It can take longer than molasses in January if you do it manually. When I started out I did it manually and it does work… as a matter of fact it works very well. But with this tool you just click a button and it will start following the people you want to follow automatically.
It also has a feature that will allow you to un-follow people who are not following you.
The un-follow feature will let you get around the 2000 Twitter limit we talked about before. If you would like to automate the friend adding process, then go to the link below and get the Twitter Friend adder. It is by far the best Twitter adder I have used and costs just $50 one time. You just let it go to work for you while you carry on with other things…like sleeping, fishing, eating and maybe even occasionally…doing the horizontal mambo.
Now if the 50 bucks is giving you heartburn…I’ve gotta tell you. It’s one of the best fifty dollar investments I have ever made. It’s all about traffic…right? Well the more followers you have on Twitter, the more prospects you have exposed to your products and services. And I have never seen a faster growing marketplace with as much global potential as Twitter. I more than made my investment back within the first four hours I used this product.
Twitter Friend Adder
Hummingbird
Hummingbird.com
Hummingbird is a much more powerful software that takes what FriendAdder does and elevates it to a much higher and more automated level. For instance, Hummingbird is designed to pause when you have hit Twitter limits, keeping you notified and safe from risks.
If folks don’t reciprocate your follow with a follow back and if you want to un-follow those people (necessary if you are at your daily Twitter limit…and want to follow others), it is painful. You might use a service like FriendorFollow.com but it is not always accurate, and while it does save time in finding those you follow but aren’t following back, you still have to go to each one and un-follow (3 clicks each minimum).
With Hummingbird, similar to follow all, it gives you an Unfollow All, which will comb through your profile and un-follow those who aren’t following you.
“There are key people that don’t follow you that you don’t want to un-follow!” Hummingbird gives users the ability to designate VIPs. These are people it remembers as you never wanting to un-follow.
Protect Previously Un-followed
With this feature Hummingbird allows you to not follow those you have previously followed (as they won’t likely follow you back).
You’ve identified someone who you respect, and would like to follow some or all of their followers, while looking at all their followers you hit the follow all button.
One time consuming aspect of building your twitter profile for business is the tedious task of following en masse. If you identify someone you like and wish to follow their followers, you have to click to follow for each one. Not a good use of time. Hummingbird users get a “Follow All” option just off the gear icon on the toolbar.
Powerful Methods to become an Elite
• Automate everything.
• What’s it worth to be able to time-warp past years of network building to become a Twitter Elite in a matter of days?
• What’s it worth to be able to instantly move tens of thousands of people to your sales?
• Generate thousands of highly targeted followers completely hands free.
• Hummingbird has a one time charge. No monthly fees, no recurring costs.
So there you have it. My recommendations for Twitter tools that will help elevate your business profile to the extreme.
Now there are two sources I used that gave me step by step instructions for most of these tools. If you find that you have a problem following the instructions given by the various software vendors then you need to go to the following two websites. They will take you by the hand and lead you to the Promised Land.
Twitter Traffic Machine
Twitter Traffic Exposed
I hope this has been helpful.
Until next post
Live the Dream,
Dave Carter
This article was originally published at http://www.automatic-sponsoring.com
Dave Carter is the author of The Freedom Formula – A success novel Available at BarnsandNoble.com and most other online bookstores. Dave has also written numerous eBooks pertaining to online marketing.
You can find more of Dave Carter’s articles at http://www.automatic-sponsoring.com While you are there be sure to pick up your *free* copy of Dave’s 106 Dynamite Ways To Build Your List
Author: Dave A Carter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Twitter Marketing – Good Twitter Marketing Software and Tools Are Expensive Or Are They?
If you are in any way interested in internet marketing, then one of your focuses should really be Twitter. Twitter marketing is one of the largest growing marketing areas out there and with millions and millions of users, Twitter could potentially be a goldmine if approached correctly.
So how to approach it correctly.
Well for a start I have already written an article on making your profile look professional by adding a great custom Twitter background, but what about beyond that
? How can you go about finding those targeted users with ease? Again, I have written an article on finding them by visiting your market leader’s Twitter page and adding their followers, but this can be incredibly time consuming and ultimately boring,and the idea of Twitter marketing is, with the exception of making lots of money, that you have fun with it!
And that is where Twitter marketing software comes in. There are many examples of marketing software for Twitter out there, but the most widely-used is called TweetAdder. When I see it is widely-used, I mean that quite hastily as Twitter marketing software is still something a lot of people do not know about and this is why you should harness is and make the most of it before it booms. This kind of software can save you countless hours of time, by doing tasks that would take 5 minutes in one or two clicks of you mouse. This kind of Twitter marketing tool helps you find particular users followers, Twitter users who have Tweeted certain phrases, bio keywords and even location and add them to their database for you to follow at the click of a button. And then with a little more work, some automated tweets combined with some genuine, personal ones you’ll be on your way.
Trouble is TweetAdder is expensive. To buy a full version it costs $188, which is quite an investment. Admittedly, the software is worth it, however not everyone has that kind of money to splash on a piece of Twitter marketing software. However, I think I may have found you an alternative.
It is called Tweet Whistle and has, as far as I can tell, all the features that TweetAdder has, just in a slightly different interface. You can find users by their location, words they have tweeted, bio keywords and follow them by a certain user that they are already following. It also has a couple of tricks of it’s own too like giving you the opportunity to send your Tweets from a particular RSS feed, and it even has live feeds of your @mentions and your Direct Messages, both sent and received, which is something direly missing from TweetAdder, which as I say, is considered the best Twitter marketing tool around. You can also automate Tweet Whistle pretty much exactly like TweetAdder too including the ability to schedule tweets which is something missing from another Twitter marketing big boy, Hummingbird 2, which comes in at $97.
So you would think that Tweet Whistle would cost somewhat less than TweetAdder, right? Maybe $50 less. Wrong. Maybe $75 less. Wrong again. I’ll just tell you.
Tweet Whistle costs just $39.99. That is nearly $150 LESS than TweetAdder. Now I know you’re probably thinking that that means that it will be a much lesser software but again you would be wrong. We’ve been testing Twitter marketing tools for a long time now and Tweet Whistle, for our money, is no lesser a great tool for marketing on Twitter than TweetAdder or Hummingbird 2. We actually couldn’t recommend it more and is a piece of software we use in Twitter marketing campaigns on a daily basis.
If you’d like to find out more about this super cheap but amazingly good Twitter marketing software take a look at our link to read more detailed views and also watch our video review. If you want to compare it to the top 2 Twitter marketing software on the market then click our link to see our indepth reviews on all three. We hope you enjoy them and have found this information useful in finding the perfect Twitter marketing software for you!
Author: Steve J Wright
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
The Secret Strategy to Successful Twitter Marketing
I bet you can’t go one day without hearing about the Internet’s latest media darling, Twitter. Everybody from the mainstream media to celebrities to your Great Aunt Millie has at least heard of Twitter. Twitter has been used for everything from a critical communications link to the outside world during the Iranian Elections to Ashton Kutcher sharing a picture of Demi Moore in her underwear. As an Internet Marketer the profit making opportunity presented by those millions upon millions of worldwide users happily tweeting away should make your mouth water so much that your literally sitting in a pool of your own drool!
Guess what? You are not the only one with that idea and thousands of would be Twitter marketers are trying to grab their share of the gold rush before the claim pinches out. Most will fail. Twitter users are becoming more sophisticated and lest tolerant of blatant marketing efforts. Let’s make sure you are not a statistic. In this article we will provide you with the secret key to required properly mine Twitter for fame and fortune.
Twitter’s enormous popularity, like all social media, is built on implicit trust. As an example of that implicit trust mechanism, Twitter only allows you to DM (Twitter shorthand for direct message) those that follow you. The (truly) brilliant minds at Twitter assumed that if a person trusts you enough to follow you, that they trust you enough to accept a direct message.
So you probably think that what I am saying is that to truly succeed with Twitter as a marketing tool you must have thousands, or even better, millions of followers. How does that make my message any different from the hundreds of other Twitter gurus who recommend that you go out and buy an expensive tool, usually from their affiliate link, and mass follow complete strangers, hoping they follow you back and Twitter doesn’t ban your account? Well, don’t get me wrong, having your own legion of loyal followers is definitely an asset, but many Twitter marketers do not have that luxury when they are first beginning to utilize the Twitter system for marketing.
The true secret to utilizing Twitter as a marketing tool is to embrace the viral nature of the Twitter itself. You might only have 100 followers, but if each of those followers has 100 followers, now you have the basis of a campaign. But wait, what about the trust issue? You need to find a way of reaching the followers of your followers (or website and / or blog visitors). You need a bridge to get over the trust chasm that divides you from the hordes of faithful minions that follow your followers.
The best Twitter strategy to build that bridge and complete the chain of trust is to get your website visitors to retweet (RT in Twitter shorthand) your message to their followers. For example, provide a form on your website or blog that encourages your visitors to tweet your message. This is where your creativity needs to come into play. Craft a compelling Tweet with a subtle, but effective, call to action and then promise your visitor (and deliver) a free report or discount coupon after they complete the act of retweeting your message. For example, a very popular method currently is to conduct Twitter contests. In exchange for an entry into your contest, your website visitor agrees to retweet your message. One company just completed a contest in which they gave away one Macbook a day for ten days. During the span of the contest, this company’s retweets trended higher than Michael Jackson’s death!
It is such a simple concept that it is very common for even the most experienced Internet marketer to forget; viral marketing is successful marketing. Your website or blog visitors trust you. The Twitter followers of your visitor trust them. By encouraging your visitors to retweet your message to their followers, there is now an implied trust in you and your messag; the trust chasm has been bridged!
Viral marketing with Twitter also has a nice side effect. If your visitor’s followers are intrigued by your message, they will voluntarily follow you – no prodding or coercion required! Thus not only are you fully exploiting the very viral nature of Twitter, but you are also building up your ever important followers list, readily available for future efforts!
Self-promotion on Twitter is dead.
Promoting your own message is the easiest way to lose followers and potentially get clobbered by the dreaded Twitter ban hammer. Don’t let others lead you to believe that Twitter itself is dead. Twitter profits are still there for the taking, however now is the time to get creative and rethink your Twitter marketing strategy to fully exploit the very viral nature of the Twitter that makes the service so popular to begin with!
Author: C. Robert Dillon
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
How Bloggers Can Use Twitter For Marketing
Technology has given us the ability to conduct business in new and better ways. Online businesses have grown tremendously in the past decade with more and more people getting on board with hopes of making money. With this business model come new challenges in how to promote and market an online business.
Your blog may be great, but if you have no idea how to market it to the millions online then your business venture has no hope of getting anywhere. There are new bloggers starting up everyday, so separating yourself from others is the way to get noticed. One of the problems facing new online marketers is lack of funds to promote or market their blog. Not all new innovations have to cost a fortune however.
Social networking is the way of the online world, sites like Facebook and Twitter have given internet marketers the tools they require to get traffic to their blogs or websites. How do you use these social networks to increase your blog traffic?
As previously mentioned, if you’re on a tight marketing or advert ising budget, then social networking
is a great way to go. Twitter is a wonderful marketing tool to start with. Through Twitter, you have the ability to meet and affect thousands of people you otherwise may never share information with. Building a relationship with readers is the most effective way to make money online. People who get to know you are more likely to return to your blog or online store.
Twitter not only increases your blog traffic, but you have the option of targeting niches as well. You can filter your Twitter search to focus on specific groups of people. If you publish a crock pot recipe website, then you can increase your visitors by filtering your audience on Twitter for people interested in that niche.
Although it’s very easy to use, Twitter should be approached as a relationship building tool rather than a selling tool. You should send messages to your followers that send them to relevant, useful information instead of just trying to sell them one product after another. Spamming is easy to do if you don’t watch what you’re sending. Nothing is worse for your business than having your Twitter account closed due to spamming.
Using Twitter for bringing visitors to your blog or online business is efficient and cost effective. Get busy following other Twitter members, send them messages and generate traffic to your blog in a few seconds.
Learn the secrets that successful bloggers use to generate more traffic and income from their blogs ‘Blogging Success Secret’ http://bloggingsuccesssecret.com
Author: Sherry Frewerd
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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?”
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. - 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.
- 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. Read my review.
B O L A J I O.
Bolaji Oyejide
Escape the Rat Race. And Find your Buried Cheese.
Author: Bolaji Oyejide
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Why I Do Not Use Twitter Marketing Software
There are a lot of Twitter marketing s
oftware product can be found on the internet nowadays. Some of them are free and some of them will cost you some money. With so many software and applications associated with Twitter that had been developed, I can see how strong is the demand for these software. And also how many people are trying to success in Twitter marketing by using these software.
I did try some of the software and applications in order to get more followers on Twitter, this is the main selling point of most of the Twitter marketing software. However, the results were very disappointing. Those Twitter marketing software claimed that I could get tons of followers easily in few days or weeks. However, I found that the Twitter followers who follow me back were mostly spammers! Who were they? They were mostly the users who never read tweets and tweet the same message everyday, with their product links by using the Twitter marketing software also. Among my Twitter followers, 90 percent of them tried to make sales and never respond to me. I was quite disappointed with this situation on Twitter.
The worst case had not yet happened. After few months, my Twitter account was getting suspended! What a shock when I tried to log in to my Twitter account and I saw the big bold words “Hold up!” and a line of message “Sorry, the profile you were trying to view has been suspended due to strange activity.” I could still view other people’s update but I could not tweet. I guessed I had break some Twitter usage rules. Yes, I did actually after I read their terms of usage. One of the Twitter rules is users are not allowed to mass follow or unfollow people in a short span of time. By using Twitter marketing software, I could follow and unfollow people fast and easy, but my Twitter account was taking the risk of getting suspended. This is probably one of the major weaknesses of Twitter marketing software.
From that day onwards, I tried to avoid using Twitter marketing software to build my business on Twitter. I tried to figure out what are the methods that works without using any software. After months of trial, I found out that I managed to get more quality Twitter followers than before. Those good followers are very responsive and they read my tweets, retweet for me and chat with me. I feel Twitter is more enjoyable without using Twitter software.
This is probably because you and your followers love to interact with real people on the internet and not the auto direct message or auto response. When I tried to practice what works on Twitter everyday, my Twitter followers grow and they are mostly great people to follow.
As a conclusion, I believe that most of the people that really success in Twitter marketing do not use software to help them to get followers. Two thousand of loyal and quality followers can be much more better than twenty thousand of Twitter followers.
You can read and learn more about Twitter in my blog at http://elvintiong.blogspot.com, there are free Twitter Marketing tips and guides for you. Welcome to leave a comment and your twitter user name so that I can follow you back. I am on Twitter at http://twitter.com/elvintiong
Author: Elvin Tiong
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Twitter Marketing Strategy – To Tweet Or Not to Tweet?
I avoided Twitter, made fun of it and repeated stories I had heard from people I know loosing friends to “twittering”; they no longer could share a car ride, enjoy a meal or even simple conversation because their friend was so obsessed with the latest “tweet.”
When Twitter first became popular I shared this sentiment:
“What could be more annoying and less useful than a site where thousands of people are given 140 characters to shout out about what they’re doing at every moment of the day? The amazing thing is that enough people out there think this mindless stream of ephemera (“I’m eating a tangerine,” “I’m waiting for a plane,” “I want a Big Mac”) is interesting enough to serve as the basis for a viable advertising platform.”
But after fellow marketers I respect reintroduced me to Twitter as a tool to complement their present strategies, I took notice and soon began to see the advantages of the “follower.” I was hooked.
Here’s what I learned. Created in 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Twitter is a free online service that allows you to broadcast short messages (140-character limit) to your friends or “followers.” You too can specify your own list of people you want to follow. Many think of Twitter not so much as a social network, but as an information network. It tells people what’s happening in the subjects they care about as it is happening in the world.
Twitter is an invaluable tool for any social marketing strategy and is one of today’s hottest new trends on the Internet. Not sure if it’s for you? Even Microsoft’s founder and the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, has a Twitter account. You can start following him at @BillGates. Oprah tweets, celebrity Ashton Kutcher even beat CNN’s breaking news feed and was the first Twitter account with one million followers.
Still, with its incredible popularity and growth, many in the marketing world continue to debate whether Twitter is a total time vacuum or a marketing tool you can’t live without. I believe its value is based on how you chose to use it.
Personally, I’m not one to chatter with friends via texting or glued to current media events via my cell phone. I still like the phone and of course emails. But I have found that Twitter is an important part of my overall social marketing strategy.
Everyone uses Twitter differently. So what’s the big deal; how should you be using Twitter in your marketing strategy? For over a year now, many have claimed that Twitter is the #1 traffic builder for their blog. I do see the spikes in traffic from cross-linking my posts to Twitter.
Twitter is an opt-in world, so if you don’t find someone’s tweets interesting, you simply stop following that person. Originally, I used Twitter to have a following that shared a common interest about new articles I was posting on my blog concerning Internet Marketing. Later, I found myself not only using it as another outlet for exposure, but also as a marketer it was useful to follow market leaders, competitors, bloggers, speakers, and authors in my niche. It became a great way to follow people I found interesting and wanted to keep up with. Twitter is like a cyber press release, but only from the people whose news you care about.
Keep in mind that although we are focused on business with promotion being the number one priority, Twitter is about give and take. If you just use it to push your stuff, you’ll be zapped in a zano-tweet-second, translation- blocked for good. Twitter is not about pushing content or your agenda, it’s about give and take.
Follow / Following / Unfollow
Many take the approach, “Anyone that won’t follow me, I’m not going to follow back.”
Follow – Twitter is similar to your RSS. Who you follow is basically who – or what information – you subscribe to. Remember it’s an opt-in system. If you’re using Twitter for marketing purposes then you want to follow the market leaders and the news sources in your niche. Don’t worry whether they follow you back. Seriously. The point of following is to get the news and updates that you prefer. Period.
I use a “Tweet Adder” to build my base of contacts or “followers” that I think may be interested in my content. I do unfollow people that have not accepted my invitation to follow me after three days. I do this to keep my ratio fairly even. The people I follow based solely on their content I am not concerned whether or not they follow me.
As I mentioned earlier, I seek people that may have an interest in what I’m doing. Twitter tools, like “Tweet Adder,” give you the ability not only to follow specific people, but also to follow people interested in specific topics. Tweet Adder offers specialized search tools that I use to build my list of followers.
These tools allow me to capture people tweeting about my specific topics and keywords. Note, when building a list use keywords similar to what you would use on a capture page including your competitor’s name.
Following – I don’t spend much time checking to see who is following me. In fact, I turned off email notifications because I found it pointless and didn’t need more spam to clear out each day. Your focus should be on building a very specific following, not on who is following you. Unless you notice that you are attracting the “wrong people” in which case, rethink your search words.
You want to regard “building your following” as you would “building your leads list.”
Unfollow – Some people will unfollow anyone that won’t follow them, or who unfollows them.
You should unfollow anyone you no longer want to follow. It’s not rude, if that person is consistently off topic to what attracted you to them in the beginning, you should set them free! As I said earlier, the followers I request to join me using the adding software, I do unfollow after a few days if they don’t accept my request. This is a completely different group than the people I choose to follow based on
their content that attracted me.
These are just a few ways to utilize Twitter. As you integrate this tool into your social marketing strategy you will learn more tactics to maximize Twitter World.
Twitter Marketing Strategy
Make sure you have a Twitter Marketing Strategy. Keep it simple, and tweet consistently. If you don’t have a specific goal or strategy, Twitter will surely become a “time vacuum” for you.
Initially I only used Twitter as a way to increase exposure for my other strategies. Then I realized I could also build a following of like-minded people that would find value in my information. Every time I announce on Facebook that I have posted new content on my blog, a tweet is automatically sent to my followers using a plug-in I installed. Then everyone that is following me can view my new posting and even better, if they like what they see, they may re-tweet and share the information with all their followers. You can see how this can maximize your exposure! Here’s an important tip, be sure to keep your tweet to 120 characters or less for easy re-tweeting. As tweets are re-tweeted they pick up characters.
“Be sure you are always providing new content that has value. You want your followers to be loyal and to have interest in what you are sharing. That is why you need to define your target market and your offers, and create a strong message-to-market match.”
Keep an eye on your followers and their mindset. Figure out why they chose to follow you, and make sure your updates, topics, products, website or blog continues to deliver on that attraction. If they did follow you specifically for those reasons, and you don’t deliver, then you are letting them down. And we know that means a “unfollow click” is coming.
Building a following on Twitter should be viewed much the same as building a lead list. You definitely want to provide quality over quantity with your Twitter marketing strategy. The more focused your topic and readership, the more productive you will be – and the higher your click-through and conversion rates will be.
Marketing is not spam. Sharing resources and links is not spam. As long as you respect your followers and continue to provide them with “real value” information they desire, you are providing a service. Not Spam. Just remember to ask yourself this about your social marketing strategy, “Why are people following me and am I delivering what they seek?”
Your Twitter marketing goal should be to tweet useful information that is of specific interest to your followers. Twitter is a place where you can be more personable and even more intimate, but you want to maintain your professional character and your integrity at all times.
Remember that Attraction Marketing is the “Key” and that you want to build Relationships.
ENGAGE your followers.
In addition to staying current on news, information and conversations in your niche, and increasing your viewership and traffic, Twitter is a great way to engage your target market in productive relationship building conversations.
Here are just a few ideas that I’ve seen work incredibly well for my social marketing strategy:
Host a contest on Twitter. For examples, search “Twitter contest” at Google.
Encourage your followers to ‘tweet you’ questions, favorite links, resources, and tips or personal experiences about your topic. Using your content blog is a great way to craft new and interesting posts. Use Twitter to really engage your target market in conversations about your industry. What do they need, what do they love, what really frustrates them?
Compile the feedback and share it in a post. Once published, thank your followers and give them the link to check out the results. Not only will you be making connections with your prospects, they will appreciate your genuine interest and you will be able to gain valuable insight that will help you tailor your Twitter marketing strategy to better serve them.
There are so many more good reasons to create a social marketing strategy, than to not. Start building your group of targeted followers with your own Twitter marketing strategy now.
Author: Cory Alan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Make Twitter Work For Your Business
Most people are aware that social media is in demand today and it has great potential for advertisers and marketers.
But there are still a lot of people who don’t know how to tap that potential or what, exactly, social media can do for their business.
Take Twitter for example.
A new article on marketing website Marketing Donut sees the experts look at Twitter’s potential as a marketing tool and reveal the simple first steps businesses need to take in order to give it a go.
“A restaurant might use it to give its ‘followers’ exclusive offers or an estate agent could post details of properties and attract a local following by tweeting news about the area,” says marketing expert Nikki Pilkington on Marketing Donut.
New Orleans-based pizza joint, Naked Pizza, is an excellent example of small businesses utilizing Twitter to increase their customer base, according to a May 18, 2009, article in AdAge. Naked Pizza has been marketing itself via Twitter and, recently, it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.
Chicago-based Berry Chill is another example cited by AdAge. Michael Farah, founder and CEO of Berry Chill, a yogurt shop, has been using Twitter to send out “Sweet Tweets” (promos that require users to show they’re Twitter followers of the store). In a month, he’s logged 700 followers and he said the tweets haven’t diminished his daily sales.
One of the main reasons for Twitter’s success as a marketing tool is its immediacy. Business owners can connect with their customers in real time, whether they want to provide event coverage while the events are going on or to provide ongoing publicity for their business or products. On the other hand, Twitter’s immediacy can be a disadvantage too. If businesses do not keep tweeting constantly, there is the danger of their tweets going unnoticed. For example, posting a tweet announcing an upcoming event just once in a day or once in two days is not enough. The tweets should be regular and constant to ensure that enough people see your tweets.
Another reason for Twitter’s success is the ease with which it can be set up. It is extremely easy to create a Twitter account (easier than other social networking sites) and to start tweeting after the account is created. Twitter can also be used for promotions like discounts or giveaways and to drive traffic to your website.
If used correctly, Twitter is a tool that can help you establish a brand or change how consumers perceive your brand.
Amruta Bhadkamkar is a Journalism major at the University of Kansas and is currently a copy-writing intern at Absorbent, Ink — The Promotional Products People.
Author: Amruta Bhadkamkar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com