Twitip

By Anna of Lucid New York – Follow her @LucidAnna

Last week I had lunch with a marketing director from a well known cosmetics company. He believes in the power of social media, especially Twitter to promote the brand. He created a company Twitter account as well as his personal account where he announces company news, new blog posts, promotions and sales.

When we chatted, he shared with me how difficult it is for him to convince his boss about the effectiveness of Twitter marketing. He had a quarterly marketing report due where he had to show “the numbers”, i.e. how much time was spent on Twitter, how many tweets and how it converted into sales.

Twitter results depend very much on the type of products you market. In most cases the immediate call to action does not bring the expected results. So should you cross off Twitter from your marketing tools?

I had this thought when I first joined Twitter. I remember a couple of my Tweets promoting a jewelry piece, offering a discount. After posting it, I would immediately go and check the results only to be disappointed and find out how few of my couple of thousands followers actually bought the piece. But then I would show up at a party where someone I was introduced to, has heard about my jewelry collection thanks to Twitter. Before the Holidays I received an email from @masscontrolkern, an online marketing guru who asked me if we could design a 14K gold and diamond necklace for his wife. He said he found me on Twitter.

As I was getting more online orders, more press inquiries and interview requests, I understood how Twitter marketing works. It’s not direct, it’s not always that you can just plug in the formula of the amount of time you spend on Twitter divided by the generated sales. You can’t measure the immediate impact of your brand’s Twitter presence. Trying to plug Twitter into a formula won’t work unless the formula results include brand awareness, exposure and word-of-mouth.

What advice would you give a business wanting to explore the world of Twitter?

I’m speaking later in the week on the topic (I’ll post a summary of my presentation next week) and would like to feature the tweeted advice of a few readers of this blog.

Here’s how it’ll work.

Login to Twitter or your favorite Twitter Client reply to @twitip with your advice. I’ll take a screenshot of as many people’s advice as I can to include their responses in my presentation.

Please keep your advice to a single tweet. Thanks for your help.

Please note: I won’t be able to use comments in this post, just tweets as I want to show the tweets as screen shots.

by Web Designer Debbie Campbell (@redkitedesign) from Red Kite Design.

One of my networking/leads groups got off on a tangent in early December and decided that we needed to learn more about social networking. One Facebook enthusiast volunteered to do a presentation on that, and since I had the most experience with Twitter (all of 5 weeks) I was nominated to do the Twitter talk.

So I’d been using Twitter for just over a month, although I’d had an account for a lot longer. I had never really spent the time to understand what it was about, and frankly wasn’t convinced that it would useful for me as a businessperson.

That may sound odd. I’m a web designer and developer, and for the past six months I’ve been a very busy one. I have a lot of demands for my time – taking online classes, going to meetings, project work, blogging, LinkedIn, and so on. I thought that Twitter looked like a big waste of time.

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by Susan Serra of Hansen Living (may be temporarily offline at the time of this posting). She blogs at The Kitchen Designer and can be found at Twitter @SusanSerraCKD.

At last the weekend came, and I decided to see what this Twitter concept was all about that I had been hearing of. I looked, I thought, I read and then read some more. Suddenly, I plunged in and became a follower and soon, a follow-ee.

It occurred to me that weekend, that, as a professional in the kitchen and bath industry for many years, Twitter is absolutely perfect for sharing the knowledge I have of my profession. Sharing on Twitter can include the communication of:

facts
concepts
information
experience
ideas
descriptions
images

I thought it might be interesting to gather some or all of these various ways of sharing my knowledge and organize them during the course of ONE day, to be focused into ONE subject.

For example, one day’s tweets had a subject of “Social Kitchen Design Day”. This title was in every tweet as a reminder of the topic. In the first tweet of the day, I announced what the topic of the day would be. Another day became “Kitchen Design Hood Day” where I provided information on kitchen ventilation. My key words are “kitchen design”. Therefore, I try to use those words in my tweets wherever possible.

Another use for this concept might be for the introduction of a product to convey useful information over time, creating familiarity with the product for one’s followers. I plan to do this for a product I represent, Hansen Kitchen, when new features are introduced into the product line. In my opinion, this type of use of Twitter should be done on an infrequent basis so as not to be viewed as a continuing “commercial” but I believe it can be very effective in building knowledge and awareness.

One day soon I will have some fun and do a topic called “Random Kitchen Design Day” which will be a whole day of random tweets on kitchen design issues. To announce it as “random” should, I hope, generate interest and anticipation as to what will come next, tweet after tweet, during that day. This can work for any business, any profession. One will quickly establish oneself as an expert in their field as they share their knowledge in this manner.

I try to make my tweets sometimes factual, sometimes fun, in an effort to keep the topic interesting. Sometimes several tweets will be connected in a micro way to one another to form a longer discussion and later tweets connected in a more general way to all the tweets, but they are all on the same topic.

Any business has a very wide assortment of topics to share information on. Selecting a topic for a given day adds substance to the days tweets, as one tweet builds on the next, helping the reader learn one topic in a way that is more broad, than is otherwise possible within one 140 character tweet.

by Lara Kulpa. Lara is the owner of Ginkgo Consulting, a web marketing and consulting firm. Follow her at @larakulpa.

Reader Question: My company recently started a Twitter account and we chose to have 3 “tweeters” in order to spread workload, include separate areas of expertise, and just give it variety. Do you think that a twitter account should always be (or at least look like) one person? Right now we describe each person in our bio. – Sean Robbins (@saucony)

As more and more businesses get into Twitter, this question is one that I’m sure many will struggle with. If the CEO of a company joins Twitter and decides to connect with people, that’s great. But the question is bound to come into a follower’s mind, “Is this really the CEO or is it someone acting on his/her behalf on Twitter?”

But what if your company has different types of products or services, geared toward different types of users? In that case, yes, I think it’s a good idea for multiple “company” twitter accounts. Let’s use the time-tested “widget company” for an example:

Widgetz is a company that manufactures, sells, and repairs widgets of many different kinds.

1. CEO of Widgetz should have a Twitter account to initially put a “face to the name”.
2. The VP of manufacturing should also have a Twitter account.
3. As should the VP of Sales.
4. And also the VP of Marketing/Advertising.
5. And definitely, the VP of the Repairs department too.

All five of these people bring different experiences with widgets to the table. They interact with the product differently, their day-to-day dealings with customers, suppliers, and retailers are entirely different. Therefore, they should be interacting with people differently, regardless if it’s on Twitter or not.

In the case of @saucony, the people using the account are currently adding their names to the end of each tweet. With only 140 characters available, they’re using valuable real estate to say who it is that’s actually responding, upwards of 8 characters worth! Having separate accounts would alleviate this.

The bottom line is that not only should multiple employees of a company be using Twitter, but they should have their own Twitter accounts. The “streaming” nature of Twitter makes it extremely difficult to have multiple people logging into one account to track follower questions or participate in a flow of discussion, without the follower being confused or unsure of exactly who he or she is talking to.

Just make sure that you’re all together avoiding overly repetitive tweets (or too many RT’s) and make sure that you’re not using Twitter with each other when you should be using an IM service. Not that you can’t interact with each other on Twitter, but keep it to a reasonable level.

Bonus Tip: Develop a Twitter landing page on your site that all the Twitter accounts link to in their profiles. There, you can explain the accounts and who’s behind them, all on one page. That’ll give you more chances to get visits to your site, and you may wind up encouraging followers to follow all members of your team on Twitter!

Over the last 6-12 months we’ve seen a real shift on Twitter with a lot more talk about Businesses using it to support various aspects of what they do.

Much has been written about businesses using Twitter badly – but I’d be interested to hear some examples of businesses that use Twitter well.

Which businesses use Twitter well? What are they doing to make you think this?

Let me ask it a little differently:

Which businesses do you follow on Twitter? Why do you follow them?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

Today as I lay squirming (just a little) on the table of my acupuncturist thinking about what we talked about before my treatment I let my mind wander a little to the topic of ‘how I’d use Twitter if I was an Acupuncturist’ (I had to take my mind off the needles sticking out of my legs somehow!).

Actually my acupuncturist Anthony Olsen IS using Twitter (but more connected to his Joomla Template membership site) but what I was thinking about as I lay on his table today was more about how an acupuncturist (or really any person with clients) could potentially use Twitter.

Here’s what came to mind.

Every time I go to see Anthony the session starts with some Question and Answer time. It usually covers a few topics like:

• Have you had any headaches (I go for migraine treatment)?
• How has your diet been?
• Have you been exercising?
• Have you been drinking enough water?
• How have you slept?
• Are you stressed?
• Can I see your tongue? (who knew that the color of your tongue could say so much!)

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It always amazes me how many people critique Twitter for being trivial due to everyone tweeting about the minute and mundane personal aspects of their day to day life – however the more I’ve interacted on Twitter the more I see people are using it for so many other purposes, quite often as part of their business (or at least for some kind of professional purpose).

So I thought it’d make an interesting question for some discussion – are you using Twitter for business or professional purposes or are you using it more in a personal, social or fun way? Or…. are you a little like me…. and use it for a bit of both?

Lets have some discussion – how do you use Twitter?

PS: a followup question – have you always used Twitter in the way that you now do? As I look at my own use of Twitter I’d say that I’ve gone through phases which have been more ‘personal’ and more related to my work. But perhaps that is just me?

by Jack Humphrey blogs from The Friday Traffic Report (follow him at @bendtheweb

Have you noticed all the electronic and tree-based books that have come out on Twitter? There’s an amazing amount of verbiage being thrown at us for such a simple service. The sheer volume of training guides, paper books, and in-depth courses on using Twitter is kind of weird when it surrounds a service that worships brevity, 140 characters at a time.

You can learn about the hottest 3rd party applications that purport to make Twitter more useful, efficient, and effective on thousands of sites. You’ll find over 11,000 search results on Amazon for “twitter.”

On the flip side, there are only a little over 13,000 results on Amazon for “rocket science!” Can a simple microblog actually be almost as complicated to understand as rocket science? Requiring just as much training in order for us to understand it? Don’t forget, Twitter’s history makes it a toddler compared to the much longer history of rocket propulsion.

This made me wonder if there really could be an overlying theme or practice which could sum up in one sentence the most important thing you need to know to be successful using Twitter to generate buzz.

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Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) and When I Have Time shares 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.

Identify & Target

To start, follow users that have mentioned your organization or cause – use http://search.twitter.com’s RSS feeds to monitor the situation. Twitterers will not be normal visitors to your website, and therefore shouldn’t be treated as such. Customize your profile accordingly and link to a Twitter Landing Page 6 Tips for Using Your Twitter Profile to Get New Followers on your site designed for Twitter followers, with a condensed introduction to organization mission and goals, communication strategy and current initiatives and provide ways they can contribute and get involved…as a Twitterer! @NWF lists a Social Networks Page on their Twitter background which lists all the social networks they’re present on.

Educate & Empower

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.