Many people have pondered the question: how can Twitter be used as a marketing tool? Twitter is becoming a powerful tool to market your websites, content and products. If you’re running a niche website, Twitter is an indispensible tool in your marketing arsenal.
When I launched Webinar Central last fall, a directory and calendar of upcoming webinars, I was faced with a dilemma. I needed to market my site to as wide an audience as possible with no budget other than the cost of spending my time. I decided to turn to Twitter and it has become a key tool for building readership and interacting with my readers. Not only have a I built a strong readership, but networking with other professionals has created partnership opportunities that have been very exciting.
Since Webinar Central was launched in October, 2008, I’ve gotten almost 25% of my traffic solely from Twitter. During the early launch days, it was responsible for most of my traffic until the site rose in it’s search rankings and I started generating traffic the old fashioned way. So, it’s great for creating quality traffic, when your site would otherwise be inactive, while it waits for indexing from the Google Gods.
Setting Up Your Twitter Backbone
I recommend being methodical when you go about initiating a Twitter Marketing campaign. It will save you time, which is your most valuable asset. Here’s a guide to the back end you’ll need for marketing a niche site on Twitter.
Today Shelley Binkley from Heal the Woman (follow her at @healthewoman shares how she uses TweetLater to grow blog readership and be more effective on Twitter.
Spending time on Twitter is like mingling through a crowded room, trying to participate in a hundred conversations at once. This can lead two two opposing states of mind, “Twitter High” and “Twitter Dysphoria”: What are these and how do you balance them and your Twittering habit to grow your blog readership?
Tweet with an Eye for Giving Other Tweeps Twitter High
Like any party Twitter is populated by interesting people and not-so-stimulating people who seem compelled to recount mundane details of their day. Fortunately Twitter is inhabited by thousands of Tweeple who like to Think Big and ponder and pose Big Questions. They throw their Big Ideas out into the Twitter Stream and see what kinds of answers bite. This can sometimes prompt a lively discussion and provide fodder for future Big Ideas.
Besides the potential for creating World Peace, the brilliance of Twitter is twofold: Unlike a cocktail party, or the office Christmas party, you can discuss topics you wouldn’t bring up with people you know “in person”. And you wouldn’t dream of going to the office party in your pajamas, but on Twitter the sky is the limit–whether it topics, attire, or lack thereof.
JR Griggs (follow them at@jrgriggs) fromJR’s 2 Centslooks at the topic of Quality vs Quantity of Twitter Followers.
Recently as I pondered my slowly growing followers on Twitter, something came to mind about who was following me. What was the real importance in the numbers? Was quantity really what was important or was it the quality of my followers? Quality meaning those who will be responding to my tweets or re-tweeting the ones they like. If you’re a business, quality followers would be the ones making purchases or utilizing your services. After much thought on this, I have come to some conclusions on what the difference is and who needs which and why.
Quantity
We’ve all seen the articles out there on how to increase our followers. A few easy ways to increase your quantity is to follow anyone who obviously has an auto follow. Especially companies like @starbucks for example. You can also look for those whose following / followers ratio is about even. They are most likely to have an auto follow as well. These are real simple ways to get a high quantity of followers. But what good does it do you to have @starbucks following you? Chances are whoever is updating it will not be subscribing to your “PC Repair Blog” or purchasing from your custom t-shirt site. So what’s the point?
This post on being a Super Hero in your use of Twitter is by Shawna Coronado from The Casual Gardener (yes, that’s her in the pic!) – (follow her at @ShawnaCoronado).
You can change the world for the better – you CAN make a difference! This is the message I have for all the Twitter community.
How can you do it? You are one person, and the Twitter Universe is immense, right? Yes, but you have Twitter Super Powers.
Truth be told, Twitter is a world of influence with the opportunity to meet hundreds and thousands of people. Although we all are on Twitter to make friends we are also on to influence others and encourage them to acknowledge our platform. Whether it is selling a retail product, service, or an idea – we are hoping that the Twitter world is listening.
And guess what? The Twitter Universe IS listening and more importantly, is out to help each other.
Lately I’ve been witnessing more and more competitions and prizes being offered by Twitter users as a way of increasing subscriber numbers. They usually go something like this:
Follow me on Twitter and you’ll go in the running to win “XXX INSERT PRIZE HERE XXX”.
Each time I see these competitions (and I’m asked to link up to them every 2nd day by those holding them so I see quite a few) I have mixed feelings. I’ll be honest (and I hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes) but there are things about these types of competitions that both attract and repulse me. Let me explain (and hopefully in the process of writing this post I’ll actually work out what I think on the topic).
The Positives of Twitter Competitions
As someone looking to find followers a competition can and (in many cases that I’ve observed) does work. I watched with interest @shoemoney and his competition recently and he saw his follower numbers shoot up hundreds (it could be thousands now) almost overnight by offering some pretty cool prizes. If you’re just interested purely in raw numbers of followers then it’s probably a strategy to try.
The flow on impact of lots of followers has some positives to it – particularly if you’re promoting a site, product or service (or building profile). It’s also probably quite good for social proof and recruiting future followers (there’s nothing like having 10,000 followers to make you seem legitimate on Twitter.
If you’re reading this site, you already know the benefits of Twitter. And whether you are promoting a business or looking for social interaction, chances are you’d like to know how to get more followers and make Twitter more beneficial to you. We’ve all read plenty of posts on Twitter ettiquete. Here’s a list of things that are sure to get you UN-followed on Twitter.
1) Bore everyone to tears with your mundane account of your day. Let us know every time you complete a task, every bite of food you put in your mouth, and every time you visit the lavatory. They will be sure to unfollow you.
2) Clog the Twitterstream with what I like to call “Serial Twittering”. Reply to everyone who has been online in the past two hours and continue to converse back and forth even when your conversation has no purpose for anyone else. Link to every page open on your browser. You’ll be sure to lose a few followers that way.
3) Or you could take the opposite approach. Don’t bother to participate at all. Don’t respond to other tweets or answer questions. You’re far too important for those peons. Just link to your latest post and move along about your day. Wait. On second thought, there’s a robot to do that for you. Just set up that plugin and you’ll never have to bother logging in to Twitter again.
4) Now it’s time to go in for the kill. Set your robot to reply to new followers with a canned greeting. In fact! You can even set it to respond when your followers post their first tweet of the day! That’s the ticket! Your followers are dropping like flies now.
And there you have it — my best advice on how to get unfollowed on Twitter. You’re welcome.
In this post Claire Chapman (follow her at @coachclaire) shares some reflections upon the ways that she’s been using Twitter to Connect, Share and Be.
I followed @chrisbrogan theme of 3 key words this year – connect, share and be and have been using these to create a clearer focus in all the work I do, including the marketing of my coaching business working with other coaches.
So, how can you use your annual themes or goals to relate to what you are doing on twitter? To share some of my goals I can talk about how I have been connecting, sharing and being on twitter and plan to continue to act in 2009.
Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) andWhen I Have Timeshares some tips for brands and non-profit organizations to engage users while becoming more personable.
If your organization hasn’t gotten on Twitter yet, what are you waiting for? But if you are looking to use Twitter as just a way to publicize new blog posts or press releases, you’re already on the wrong path. Don’t worry, you can still get on the right one! Here are points to follow to turn an anonymous Twitter account into your organization’s shining advocate.
Get Personal & Be Real
As it often is the case with non-profit organizations, the cause or brand does not usually enter into someone’s heart until it becomes personal for them: they have a personal experience directly related to the cause or someone in their circle of associates motivates them. Twitter can be another way to humanize the experience for people new to the organization or just interested in the subject. Avoid only broadcasting links and mix thoughtful, “We’re real people, too” Tweets in with standard links. For the mechanics of using Twitter, make sure you read 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners. Avoid some of the newbie traps with 8 Sure-Fire Ways To Tick Off the Twitterverse like thanking new followers or using canned auto-replies. Concentrate on showing that there’s a real person (and a soulful organization) behind the Twitter username and get into conversations with your followers! @Greenversations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers not only a “corporate” Twitterer but encourages you to follow their “human” Twitterer @levyj413, and @NWF the National Wildlife Service encourages you to follow their numerous staff on Twitter.
One of the strengths of non-profit organizations is access to bipartisan statistics, in-depth studies and content-rich research on their particular subject that the average user may not have access to or know how to find. Highlight new, pertinent information for your followers, give them exclusive access to something, and provide materials that can be re-Tweeted (RT) and directly deep-linked (and therefore not behind a login!). They may take the information you’ve given them and run with it – creating their own reflections and analysis elsewhere!
Motivate & Reward
In these belt-tightening times, while wallets might be closed tighter, people will be more willing to donate their time, expertise and opinions. Through Twitter’s word-of-mouth functionality, your message has the potential to be passed among several different and new circles of acquaintances. Give various options to get involved and a range of activities to participate in based on time commitment: re-Tweet, blog, donate time, design work, money or promote and organize offline activities. Highlight some of your biggest Twitter supporters by interviewing or profiling them, thank a particular follower once a week or month on Twitter, or hold contests for re-Tweets or @replies. In the spirit of non-profit organizations, instead of offering prizes or monetary rewards, offer the money you would have spent as a “gift card” that will go directly to the user’s choice of initiative within your organization.
Provoke & Gather
Some of the most interesting discussions on Twitter can revolve around provocative / controversial questions. If you can propose thought and Tweet-provoking questions related to your organization, you can gather your followers’ ideas and feedback to make the organization better or more-informed. You can present their ideas internally or for official blog / site communications or publications citing Twitter usernames, and therefore making your Twitter community direct contributors to your success. Seek out those success stories of evangelists and advocates who are contributing greatly to your organization and communicate their tips and tricks to make the rest of your followers more effective with their networks.
Be Newsworthy & Make News
Do something noteworthy to use the word of mouth and viral communication strategies that work best on Twitter. Think of an innovative way to use Twitter and all of its advantages: spreading the word, immediacy, feedback. Invent an entirely new way to publicize some of your initiatives. You don’t have to change your organization’s goals, but you have to change the way it’s presented and motivates your target. Invent a #initiative tag to utilize/re-Tweet so that people can identify the campaign.
How do you track what links are being clicked on on Twitter? Today Hendry Lee (follow him at @hendrylee) shares some tips on how to do it.
Much of Twitter is about communication with your peers and meeting new people. I’ve seen many social media marketers claim that in fact conversation is the only thing that matters in Twitter.
I won’t go into detail about it in this post, but no matter what people say, marketers can only track numbers. And without tracking, there is no way to measure how effective social media is to your business.
Based on the latest data from Hitwise, Twitter still continues to grow despite outages and other issues. Nielsen reported in October 2008 that Twitter is growing as much as 343% in 12 months.
Twitter’s growth and the ability to drive traffic via Twitter is two different things, but Jason Calacanis, for instance, blogged that Twitter was sending over 20,000 people a month to his web site Mahalo.com.
With that, I bet all marketers, webmasters and publishers will agree that they should take a very serious look at Twitter, especially if they want to tap into new source of audience and engage those users as part of their marketing activities.
The Problem with Tracking Traffic from Twitter
Before I start, let me elaborate a bit about the challenge for tracking Twitter. Feel free to skip this section if you already know it. (more…)
In this postCrystal N Woods(follow her at @crystalsquest) shares some great tips for those starting out in Twitter.
The buzz this year is all about Twitter, the ‘microblog’ service.
Both the web and twitter are full of pleas from people who say they don’t ‘get it’. In a nutshell, the point of twitter is to post very short updates – no more than 140 characters. It’s a bit like a txt msg for the web, on ‘what you’re doing now’. These tweets can be links to cool sites you’ve found, conversations with other twitter users, questions you want a quick answer for, what you’re having for dinner or even haiku poetry.
The main difference between twitter and txt is: when you send it out it goes out to everyone who’s opted to follow you. On the receiving end, you’re getting these updates from everyone you’ve chosen to follow. This constant flow of short messages to and from is called the ‘twitter stream’. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. Just like modern life. In fact, it occurred to me that the people who ‘get it’ and rave about it the most are the very same people who have achieved vast levels of success in this information age. So, here’s my take on the top 10 success tips for twitter… and Life!
1. Fluff and filler are no longer an option. Nobody has time/interest in reading them. Get to the point.
Want to market your website on Twitter? Today Jonathan Thomas from WebinerCentral.net (follow him at @jonathanwthomas) shows you how.
Spending time on Twitter is like mingling through a crowded room, trying to participate in a hundred conversations at once. This can lead two two opposing states of mind, “Twitter High” and “Twitter Dysphoria”: What are these and how do you balance them and your Twittering habit to grow your blog readership?
Lately I’ve been witnessing more and more competitions and prizes being offered by Twitter users as a way of increasing subscriber numbers. They usually go something like this:
In this post 
Much of Twitter is about communication with your peers and meeting new people. I’ve seen many social media marketers claim that in fact conversation is the only thing that matters in Twitter.