Social Media & Marketing Part 3: Twitter

The question is: ‘How to utilise the simple platform that is Twitter to benefit a businesses marketing.’

I think Twitter can easily, and is quite commonly, used badly to little or no effect to the businesses online marketing. Users must be aware that litterally “tweeting” pointless information, for the sake of tweeting, will not generate a dedicated army of followers.

Businesses have to imagine what they can write that other Tweeters will take the time out of their day to read? This may be posting an interesting fact, or a current news event (or a view on a current news event, which could potentially spark a debate), or a joke etc. The trick is taking this “interesting information” which people will read and “weaving” in information about your business or links to your website or blog.

Twitter is actually the perfect advertising tool to push traffic to a blog or an article/ page on a businesses website. Blogs on Twitter seem to generally generate a lot of followers as the offer something generally useful to the follower for following you. These blogs can provide professional knowledge of the businesses area which the user may find interesting. By providing this information will drive traffic from your Tweets to your blog to your website to potentially your New Customer.

The tool of Re-Tweeting on Twitter is also a very useful option, as users who read your tweets can then “Re-Tweet” them to their followers, and in turn their followers may do the same.

Tweeting about current events I think is a particularly effective way of people viewing your tweets, talking about something interesting. No one apart from your close friends, following you, want to know whether “you’ve just popped out for a pint of milk” they want information, they want news, they want facts and humorous images and videos.

Ideas About What to Tweet

1. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
2. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
3. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
4. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
5. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
6. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but keeps you in the “Interesting Peeps” list in people’s minds.
7. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
8. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
9. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
10. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting others, too.