There is a lot of buzz around Twitter these days, but if you aren’t looking to find out what your friend had for coffee this morning or what’s happening in the latest celebrity gossip, does Twitter have relevance for business? The answer is yes. But it takes a little digging to understand when and how to use this exploding social phenomenon as a tool to build your business.
Marketing has traditionally relied on push methods. Content was sent via direct mail, television advertisements, e-mail, and more. Regardless of the channel, the strategy was to push information in front of consumers, whether they were looking for the information or not.
MousePaper Calendar Mouse Pad - email johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com
Today, thanks to the Internet, marketing has become far more reliant on pull methods. Whether it’s news, politics, business or entertainment, people can pull the content they want, when they want it, so they are receiving only information of relevance to them when they are looking for it. For marketers, the goal is to get people to pull information on their products and services or, if the person is searching by topic, to make sure that their company’s products and services get in front of the user’s eyes. (Hence the importance of search engine optimization—SEO.)
One of the places Internet users are pulling information from is social networking sites. While many in the business community are still getting their minds around whether or not it is relevant to their business, social networking itself is exploding—and its influence over branding and word-of-mouth is growing.
In part, this growth in influence is being driven by skepticism about traditional media. Instead of relying on television, radio and publications, people are turning to word-of-mouth sources such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and Facebook. Consumers may not see these sources as more objective, but they may see them as more “pure” in that they are the “real deal” and less influenced by corporate speak. They also provide information that is more diverse.
Make Your Own Easy Button - Press for Sound johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order
Twitter Basics
How are consumers getting information from these sources? They are looking at comments, blogs, trackbacks, feedback and other forms of user interaction. If you’ve read the reviews of a book on Amazon before buying, looked at the seller ratings on eBay, or clicked through a link on a blog post, you know just how powerful these peer influences can be. One of the most powerful these days is Twitter.
So what is Twitter? At its inception, Twitter started out as a content management system. Over time, it morphed into a mass messaging system of the most global and colossal kind. The premise of Twitter is simply to ask millions of people, “What are you doing?” then allow them to answer in 140 characters or less. The result is a free social messaging utility that allows millions of people to stay connected simultaneously. The power for marketing is nearly unlimited—if you can harness it.
Once you open a Twitter account, you can “follow” people that you choose. Once you log into your Twitter account, updates from everyone you are following are displayed to you in a list (like a giant RSS feed) in real time. You can then scan all of the “tweets,” as they are called, to stay updated with what people are posting and what they feel is important at that time. People can choose to follow you, as well. When they do, your tweets are displayed in their Twitter account, along with all of the tweets of everyone else that person is following.
Tweets can be about anything, but from a marketing perspective, you want to keep it about relevant business issues. You might tweet about the status update on a project, an announcement about a new blog post, or a link to a resource you think your followers might be interested in.
RECTANGLE MAGNETS keep your message in front of your clients. johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order
For example, interlinkONE offers multichannel marketing software. As president of interlinkONE, I tweet about marketing information that I think clients, prospects, and others in the industry might find valuable.
You can also do what is called “re-tweeting,” which is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an e-mail message. “RT” stands for “re-tweet,” and the name after the @ reflects the original source of the information. This is hyperlinked so that people can click through to the original source if they find the information of value.
People can also send you personal messages. Unlike e-mail messages, these messages are posted publicly, like posting a comment on a blog. By posting a comment, this not only gives you an avenue for communicating with the person who has the account, but indirectly with others following them, too. Like posting a comment on a blog, which gives you visibility to everyone who reads that post, commenting on a tweet puts your comment in front of every person following them.
Using Twitter for Marketing
How can you use these capabilities to market yourself? Whether you are tweeting, re-tweeting or commenting on someone else’s tweet, you are creating visibility and marketing yourself and your company. From a marketing standpoint, the goal is to begin to attract followers so that you can post information and position yourself as a thought leader to your followers and, by extension, your followers’ larger social network circles. This leads to greater industry recognition, brand building and hopefully, sales.
Although some Twitter members use the platform to sell, sell, sell, I prefer to stay away from this approach. Positioning yourself in terms of thought leadership can be more powerful—and longer term. This means posting things that are of value to the people that follow you. Your posts may be related to trends in the marketplace, links to valuable e-books or white papers, providing marketing ideas, and so forth. It will also help you discover other sites and communities where you can share your knowledge.
Of course, you can post what’s going on in your company, as well. This might include news updates, events and new product announcements. You can also post fun things. Did someone have a baby? Is your company a-buzz with the NCAA tournament pool? It allows you to show the human side of your business. You don’t want to overdo it, but keep in mind that people do business with people, not with companies, so personalizing your business can have long-term benefits for customer loyalty.
I didn't know these were so cheap - find out how low: johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com
Let’s look at some specific steps to using Twitter for marketing.
• Lead Prospecting
Find people who are in your target audience and follow them. One way to do this is to search on specific names in the “Search People” box at the top of the page. Another way is to use the search box at the bottom of the page and search on terms that are relevant to your business. The search results will return the names of Twitter members that include these terms in their profiles.
Once you have leads, “follow” them. This allows you to read these members’ profiles, read their posts and do intelligence gathering before you make contact. Even if you do not contact this person directly, they will get a notification from Twitter that you are following them. This allows them to visit your profile to find out about you.
You can also do searches based on geography. For example, you might find all of the people that mentioned the word “print” in their profile and who live in a 15-mile radius of your ZIP code.
• Join Conversations
Just like networking at a business event, you are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved. On Twitter, this includes re-tweeting posts or making replies to other people’s posts.
Replying to another person’s post serves much the same function as posting a reply to a blog post, except that your reply becomes visible to all of the people following that member. Not only does this put your post directly in front of this extended network (giving them an opportunity to re-tweet your post), but your Twitter ID is hot-linked to your reply so they can click through and find out more information about you. To reply, just add the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name. For example, @JohnFoleyJr, or @PrintingNews. You are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved.
Bayonetta by Sega for the PS3
• Competitive Intelligence
We’ve already talked about using the search functions in Twitter to locate prospects, but you can use them to do competitive reconnaissance, too. Put your competitors’ names (or even your own company’s name) into the search box and seeing what comes up. It’s like having your ear to the wall to see what people are saying.
• Build your network
Twitter is nearly useless unless people are following you, so the first thing you need to do is build your network. Use the advance search tools to find Twitter members who are relevant to you, who you would want to have following you and who might have interest in your product or service.
Twitter also allows you to access the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketing or other senior executives, I’ll follow them to find out more about them, and hope that they check out my profile and follow me.
Nintendo Wii (for Japanese games only)
• Engage with the network you have built
In order to get traction on Twitter, you have to use Twitter. You have to get out there, get the conversations going, post information and make yourself visible. You want to be focused in your target audience and post relevant information. If that person isn’t you, it might be someone else at your company to whom you designate the job.
When possible, let others tell your story. Word-of-mouth marketing has exploded. If you have a great company, product or service, people will spread that message for you. That starts by tweeting relevant information. If you become a good conduit for content, people will return the favor (hopefully) by re-tweeting the information. That’s one reason I find content that is relevant to my followers, even if I didn’t write it.
• Be consistent
There are companies that put in hours a day building their brands on social networking sites like Twitter. Some even hire full-time people for this function. Not everyone can do this, but the more time you spend, the more benefit you get. We put in one-half hour a day on Twitter—it is a consistent brand building effort. If you really want to have a strong social networking presence, you have to work it. Be consistent.
Nightmare Before Christmas Monopoly Game Collectors Edition
• Track and analyze
Yes, the activity generated by Twitter can be tracked. One way we do this is integrating the conversation into a CRM tool. We follow clients and prospects, and put their Twitter activity directly into our records. In other words, we track their Twitter activity the same way we track anything else, like phone contacts or files we’ve sent. In our system, we capture the current five tweets. Good salesmanship relies on knowing about your prospects. That’s a content management issue, and Twitter can be great content! We also track the hits to our Web site that come through Twitter. When we post an article or retweet, we pass that through a Tiny URL that is tracked in our system. We tie together landing pages that people don’t know they’ve been passed through. It’s a highly effective tracking mechanism. We use the same method for links from other social networks, such as LinkedIn.
Not only can we tell where people are coming from, but we can tell where they are going. We know what they are reading on the site. We can also track back from Twitter activity to see how we are doing from our search engine optimization efforts. For example, we might see that people come from Google search to Twitter to the interlinkONE Web site. This tells us that Twitter is having an impact on our Web traffic.
Benefits of Twitter
There has been a lot of negative buzz about social networking sites as being a waste of time. Far from it. From a marketing perspective, Twitter is highly effective, when used correctly, for doing the following things:
- Finding prospects;
- Talking to and educating your customers and prospects;
- Providing a platform for establishing yourself as a thought leader;
- Enabling you to establish your brand as a useful resource.
At the same time, do not lose sight on the fact that Twitter or any social media is simply one part of a successful marketing mix. As with any channel, it doesn’t act alone. Traditional marketing media must still be used to reach everyone in your audience.
John Foley is the president and CEO of interlinkONE Inc., a company which produces a software solution that manages marketing needs.
Twitter as a Marketing Tool
{ November 6, 2009 @ 12:14 AM } · { Branding, Twitter }
{ Tags: Amazon, Bayonetta, Big Sound Button, Blogs, Business, Calendar, Calendar Magnet, Comments, Content Management System, Cuticle Tool, Digg, e-book, Easy Button, eBay, Entertainment, Facebook, Feedback, interlinkONE, John Foley, LinkedIn, Monopoly, Mousepad, Nail Clipper, Nail File, News, Nightmare Before Christmas, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3 (PS3), Politics, Publication, Radio, Re-Tweet, RSS Feed, Scissors, Search Engine Optimization, Sedona Nail Care Kit, Sega, SEO, Social Networking, Suede-Touch 2-Piece Standing Protective Case, Television, Trackbacks, Traditional Media, Tweets, Twitter, User Interaction, White Papers, YouTube } · { Comments (2) }
There is a lot of buzz around Twitter these days, but if you aren’t looking to find out what your friend had for coffee this morning or what’s happening in the latest celebrity gossip, does Twitter have relevance for business? The answer is yes. But it takes a little digging to understand when and how to use this exploding social phenomenon as a tool to build your business.
Marketing has traditionally relied on push methods. Content was sent via direct mail, television advertisements, e-mail, and more. Regardless of the channel, the strategy was to push information in front of consumers, whether they were looking for the information or not.
MousePaper Calendar Mouse Pad - email johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com
Today, thanks to the Internet, marketing has become far more reliant on pull methods. Whether it’s news, politics, business or entertainment, people can pull the content they want, when they want it, so they are receiving only information of relevance to them when they are looking for it. For marketers, the goal is to get people to pull information on their products and services or, if the person is searching by topic, to make sure that their company’s products and services get in front of the user’s eyes. (Hence the importance of search engine optimization—SEO.)
One of the places Internet users are pulling information from is social networking sites. While many in the business community are still getting their minds around whether or not it is relevant to their business, social networking itself is exploding—and its influence over branding and word-of-mouth is growing.
In part, this growth in influence is being driven by skepticism about traditional media. Instead of relying on television, radio and publications, people are turning to word-of-mouth sources such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and Facebook. Consumers may not see these sources as more objective, but they may see them as more “pure” in that they are the “real deal” and less influenced by corporate speak. They also provide information that is more diverse.
Make Your Own Easy Button - Press for Sound johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order
Twitter Basics
How are consumers getting information from these sources? They are looking at comments, blogs, trackbacks, feedback and other forms of user interaction. If you’ve read the reviews of a book on Amazon before buying, looked at the seller ratings on eBay, or clicked through a link on a blog post, you know just how powerful these peer influences can be. One of the most powerful these days is Twitter.
So what is Twitter? At its inception, Twitter started out as a content management system. Over time, it morphed into a mass messaging system of the most global and colossal kind. The premise of Twitter is simply to ask millions of people, “What are you doing?” then allow them to answer in 140 characters or less. The result is a free social messaging utility that allows millions of people to stay connected simultaneously. The power for marketing is nearly unlimited—if you can harness it.
Once you open a Twitter account, you can “follow” people that you choose. Once you log into your Twitter account, updates from everyone you are following are displayed to you in a list (like a giant RSS feed) in real time. You can then scan all of the “tweets,” as they are called, to stay updated with what people are posting and what they feel is important at that time. People can choose to follow you, as well. When they do, your tweets are displayed in their Twitter account, along with all of the tweets of everyone else that person is following.
Tweets can be about anything, but from a marketing perspective, you want to keep it about relevant business issues. You might tweet about the status update on a project, an announcement about a new blog post, or a link to a resource you think your followers might be interested in.
RECTANGLE MAGNETS keep your message in front of your clients. johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order
For example, interlinkONE offers multichannel marketing software. As president of interlinkONE, I tweet about marketing information that I think clients, prospects, and others in the industry might find valuable.
You can also do what is called “re-tweeting,” which is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an e-mail message. “RT” stands for “re-tweet,” and the name after the @ reflects the original source of the information. This is hyperlinked so that people can click through to the original source if they find the information of value.
People can also send you personal messages. Unlike e-mail messages, these messages are posted publicly, like posting a comment on a blog. By posting a comment, this not only gives you an avenue for communicating with the person who has the account, but indirectly with others following them, too. Like posting a comment on a blog, which gives you visibility to everyone who reads that post, commenting on a tweet puts your comment in front of every person following them.
Using Twitter for Marketing
How can you use these capabilities to market yourself? Whether you are tweeting, re-tweeting or commenting on someone else’s tweet, you are creating visibility and marketing yourself and your company. From a marketing standpoint, the goal is to begin to attract followers so that you can post information and position yourself as a thought leader to your followers and, by extension, your followers’ larger social network circles. This leads to greater industry recognition, brand building and hopefully, sales.
Although some Twitter members use the platform to sell, sell, sell, I prefer to stay away from this approach. Positioning yourself in terms of thought leadership can be more powerful—and longer term. This means posting things that are of value to the people that follow you. Your posts may be related to trends in the marketplace, links to valuable e-books or white papers, providing marketing ideas, and so forth. It will also help you discover other sites and communities where you can share your knowledge.
Of course, you can post what’s going on in your company, as well. This might include news updates, events and new product announcements. You can also post fun things. Did someone have a baby? Is your company a-buzz with the NCAA tournament pool? It allows you to show the human side of your business. You don’t want to overdo it, but keep in mind that people do business with people, not with companies, so personalizing your business can have long-term benefits for customer loyalty.
I didn't know these were so cheap - find out how low: johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com
Let’s look at some specific steps to using Twitter for marketing.
• Lead Prospecting
Find people who are in your target audience and follow them. One way to do this is to search on specific names in the “Search People” box at the top of the page. Another way is to use the search box at the bottom of the page and search on terms that are relevant to your business. The search results will return the names of Twitter members that include these terms in their profiles.
Once you have leads, “follow” them. This allows you to read these members’ profiles, read their posts and do intelligence gathering before you make contact. Even if you do not contact this person directly, they will get a notification from Twitter that you are following them. This allows them to visit your profile to find out about you.
You can also do searches based on geography. For example, you might find all of the people that mentioned the word “print” in their profile and who live in a 15-mile radius of your ZIP code.
• Join Conversations
Just like networking at a business event, you are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved. On Twitter, this includes re-tweeting posts or making replies to other people’s posts.
Replying to another person’s post serves much the same function as posting a reply to a blog post, except that your reply becomes visible to all of the people following that member. Not only does this put your post directly in front of this extended network (giving them an opportunity to re-tweet your post), but your Twitter ID is hot-linked to your reply so they can click through and find out more information about you. To reply, just add the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name. For example, @JohnFoleyJr, or @PrintingNews. You are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved.
Bayonetta by Sega for the PS3
• Competitive Intelligence
We’ve already talked about using the search functions in Twitter to locate prospects, but you can use them to do competitive reconnaissance, too. Put your competitors’ names (or even your own company’s name) into the search box and seeing what comes up. It’s like having your ear to the wall to see what people are saying.
• Build your network
Twitter is nearly useless unless people are following you, so the first thing you need to do is build your network. Use the advance search tools to find Twitter members who are relevant to you, who you would want to have following you and who might have interest in your product or service.
Twitter also allows you to access the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketing or other senior executives, I’ll follow them to find out more about them, and hope that they check out my profile and follow me.
Nintendo Wii (for Japanese games only)
• Engage with the network you have built
In order to get traction on Twitter, you have to use Twitter. You have to get out there, get the conversations going, post information and make yourself visible. You want to be focused in your target audience and post relevant information. If that person isn’t you, it might be someone else at your company to whom you designate the job.
When possible, let others tell your story. Word-of-mouth marketing has exploded. If you have a great company, product or service, people will spread that message for you. That starts by tweeting relevant information. If you become a good conduit for content, people will return the favor (hopefully) by re-tweeting the information. That’s one reason I find content that is relevant to my followers, even if I didn’t write it.
• Be consistent
There are companies that put in hours a day building their brands on social networking sites like Twitter. Some even hire full-time people for this function. Not everyone can do this, but the more time you spend, the more benefit you get. We put in one-half hour a day on Twitter—it is a consistent brand building effort. If you really want to have a strong social networking presence, you have to work it. Be consistent.
Nightmare Before Christmas Monopoly Game Collectors Edition
• Track and analyze
Yes, the activity generated by Twitter can be tracked. One way we do this is integrating the conversation into a CRM tool. We follow clients and prospects, and put their Twitter activity directly into our records. In other words, we track their Twitter activity the same way we track anything else, like phone contacts or files we’ve sent. In our system, we capture the current five tweets. Good salesmanship relies on knowing about your prospects. That’s a content management issue, and Twitter can be great content! We also track the hits to our Web site that come through Twitter. When we post an article or retweet, we pass that through a Tiny URL that is tracked in our system. We tie together landing pages that people don’t know they’ve been passed through. It’s a highly effective tracking mechanism. We use the same method for links from other social networks, such as LinkedIn.
Not only can we tell where people are coming from, but we can tell where they are going. We know what they are reading on the site. We can also track back from Twitter activity to see how we are doing from our search engine optimization efforts. For example, we might see that people come from Google search to Twitter to the interlinkONE Web site. This tells us that Twitter is having an impact on our Web traffic.
Benefits of Twitter
There has been a lot of negative buzz about social networking sites as being a waste of time. Far from it. From a marketing perspective, Twitter is highly effective, when used correctly, for doing the following things:
At the same time, do not lose sight on the fact that Twitter or any social media is simply one part of a successful marketing mix. As with any channel, it doesn’t act alone. Traditional marketing media must still be used to reach everyone in your audience.
John Foley is the president and CEO of interlinkONE Inc., a company which produces a software solution that manages marketing needs.