Social media have progressively changed our life in a way that almost everyone has some form of existence over social networking websites. Despite the fact that Twitter is still quite a small network as compared to social giants like Facebook and MySpace, the micro-blogging tool is getting a tremendous amount of buzz these days. Individuals, celebrities (Barack Obama, Shaquille O’Neal), big corporations (Dell, Zappos), media companies (CNN), athletes and many others are now on Twitter, posting short 140 character messages to their followers. Roughly 55 million unique visitors log into their Twitter accounts and post more than 1 billion tweets every day.
One would ask why is all that craze for reading short messages on trivial topics?
Perhaps another more relevant question would be: Should you be twittering? And the intuitive answer is “yes”. Twitter is a fascinating networking tool and a great place to get instant opinions on any topic. What’s more, after the initial skepticism, many have discovered the power of Twitter as a business tool.
Although many personal brands have been successfully elaborated over the Twitter platform, the most productive use of the service is for businesses that have always wanted to stay closer to the minds of their customers and to explore their immediate reactions to any new product.
In fact, Twitter has already started to have an impact on the business. Businesses that have been able to win trust and build an interactive brand presence via Twitter, already reap the fruits of their efforts. Dell sold more than $1 million in products via Twitter, while companies like Zappos and Comcast have found Twitter as a compelling medium to provide customer support and eventually improve their corporate reputation. Big stores use Twitter to offer discount codes to their customers and prospects.
Businesses that want to have the edge are daily scanning the landscape and watching out for new trends on Twitter.
Many brands, in their constant pursuit of communities and customers have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and quickly launched Twitter accounts to secure their brand name. But the more Twitter grows, the more difficult it becomes to build a niche micro-presence that will ultimately succeed. As it’s getting more and more complex, simply having an account and posting tweets will not be enough. You need a good strategy and patience to stick to it.
Here are a few workable tips and steps you can embark on:
Define your strategy
Before starting your twittering, you should carefully devise a strategy for your social media success. Answer yourself questions like: What is the purpose of integrating Twitter into your business? Marketing? Client communication? Customer service? How will all that fit into your current business model?
Identify and Analyze Successful Twitter Accounts
You can start your journey with MrTweet, a service for making Twitter connections. MrTweet offers two simple, but extremely powerful features: firstly, you will get relevant followers, and secondly, you will discover the key influencers in your network. By following a dozen of successful twitterers and companies that match your interests or business field, you will be able to explore the best practices that have made them so popular and learn from them.
Get Organized
TweetDeck is one of the well-known Twitter clients which you can use in order to get your mission easily accomplished. With TweetDeck, you can read current Tweets (from those you’re following), monitor replies to your tweets as well as all who mention your user ID, and watch for direct messages to you. Also, TweetDeck will help you classify your Twitter followers into different groups: for example: people you work with, people in your industry, people whose opinions you particularly respect and so on.
So, use TweetDeck to organize your communication needs.
Effective Marketing
Twitter is about starting conversations, building relationships, and ultimately increasing conversions. That is why, you should never apply aggressive marketing techniques. Emphasize on your ability to make connections rather than only market your company and products. It is important to achieve a good balance between content, comments, conversations, and your product or service pitch.
Expand your Presence and Influence
It is true that remaining "small" helps better target your followers. However, if you are small you will be the only one who markets your company and services. Once you grow, other people will start marketing you as well. If you are an influencer yourself, people will love talking about you and showing their association with you. In other words, you will take advantage of so-called word of mouth marketing. This is the only way to get your company’s brand spread virally.
In conclusion
If you invest time to create your own strategy and build a Twitter community, in return you will get new clients and leads, new partners, lots of PR and a vehicle for getting your company’sbrand out into the marketplace. And never forget that social media is all about the value: the value of your conversations and contributions.
Share your thoughts on how you use Twitter to market yourself or your customer and make sure to follow us at http://twitter.com/promotionworld.
