February 22, 2012

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8 Indisputable Reasons To Use Twitter for Business Marketing

January 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Twitter started in 2006 and since has expanded to 200 million users and 1.6 billion searches per day. It’s an ideal social media tool for business owners to connect with their customers in real-time, a huge asset to customer satisfaction.

However, many business owners find Twitter to be somewhat complex when first approached. Twitter also has etiquette and best practices far different than that of Facebook and LinkedIn which often leaves business owners perplexed and overwhelmed. But with a little practice and effort, Twitter can be a very effective business marketing tool for the 8 reasons outlined below.

1. Customer Service

Customers sometimes just want a quick question answered immediately….Twitter is the perfect platform for this. If the issue or question can be asked within 140 characters or less, typically it can be answered and diffused in 140 characters or less. 

2. Reputation Management

Twitter allows you to easily monitor the sentiment surrounding your brand, it’s products and services. From here you can either thank the person who was singing your praises or intervene and attempt to make a dissatisfied customer happy again, thereby creating customer retention, another major benefit of Twitter

3. Lead Generation

Twitter is an easy platform to share any value-based information such as your company’s blog posts, eBooks and webinars, all essential inbound marketing content that will make your brand stand out from the crowd and appear as an industry expert. If you are using Twitter as a lead generation tool, make sure you are using landing pages that can capture a lead’s information before allowing access to the content. 

4. Market Intelligence and Research

Twitter is a great way to gain insight from your customers quickly. Curious how your customers would like to receive sales promotional information, text or email? Ask them on Twitter. Would your customers prefer a downloadable coupon they can print off or a coupon code to be used in a shopping cart, or both? Ask them on Twitter.

5. Competitive Research

Twitter data is open to everyone by default and most companies who market on Twitter do not protect their tweets, so Twitter is ideal for monitoring your competition. Use a third party application such as Hootsuite to set up a stream and monitor keywords and mentions of your competition. 

6. Keyword Phrase Opportunities

Another great way to engage with a targeted audience is to use the advanced search option and locate tweets via keyword phrases for a unique opportunity to reach out to people who would benefit from your product or service. For example, if someone tweets, “looking for a plumber” and your business is plumbing, you can monitor these keyword phrases in tweets via a 3rd party software and intervene. 

7. Promote Other Social Networks

If you are having a sweepstakes on Facebook, share it on Twitter. If you just updated your company profile on LinkedIn, share it on Twitter. If you have strong engagement on a status update you posted to Facebook, share this on Twitter and encourage your followers to post their opinion. Cross promoting other sites allows your followers to get to know you better on your other networks as well and increase brand awareness. 

8. Personalize Your Brand

Probably one of the most valuable reasons to use Twitter is it allows your brand to have a personality. People want to connect with people, not businesses. Your Twitter voice should be genuine and likable. If you accomplish this, you will create long-lasting customers who will likely become brand advocates.

Share a photo of your smiling co-worker, share an image of your trade show booth, ask a question that elicits an opinion from your followers, promote an offer exclusive to your followers, share a compelling quote and why you like it, get excited for the launch of your new product, re-tweet a customer’s kind comment about your brand and thank them, engage in conversations around your niche, share a video of your most recent conference event. This is the real power behind social media marketing and Twitter; you become relatable, valuable and inspire others to buy your products and services. 

 

What other ways have you found Twitter to be a valuable asset to your marketing? 

Need help keeping up with Twitter? Bee Social can help. We can completely manage your Twitter account for you, co-manage it with you, or consult with you on best practices, effective strategies and marketing campaigns. Contact Us to learn more. 

If you found this post helpful, please share with your social networks!

 

Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Twitter Tools For Business Building-Part 3

January 19, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is the final installment of Twitter Tools for Business Building.

To view Part 1, go here: Social Oomph

To view Part 2, go here: HootSuite, TwitPic & bit.ly

Tweet Beep, Twellow, Twollo, Twitter Tab and Revisit will be discussed. As new innovative Twitter tools become available, I will mention them here in my blog. The 5 mentioned in this post are very useful and will help you engage with a more targeted audience which will drive more traffic to your website and more importantly, 3 of the tools discussed will help you monitor and manage your online business reputation.

Tweet Beep allows you to manage your online Twitter reputation. Alerts will be emailed to you whenever someone tweets about your business, your name, or your domain. You select the alert criteria and what to watch for. This is great for monitoring what is being said about your brand, your business, it’s products and services.

Tweet Beep can get you more traffic to your website. Determine your targeted keywords and enter them into Tweet Beep. Tweet Beep will then send you emails whenever someone mentions your subject matter or keywords in a tweet. What you would do next is follow these people (usually they will automatically follow you back) and give them updates about the subject matter and share information with those followers.

There is a Premium account; at $20/month you get 200 alerts, a 15 minute alert option, and no advertisements.

Twollo is very similar to Tweet Beep. It also allows you to manage your online reputation by tracking what people are saying about you or your website or products. Twollo also allows you to gain targeted followers. When you create an account, you will be allowed to submit keywords and Twollo will then automatically locate and follow people who share your interests. Many of these people will then follow you. There is a monthly cost that starts out at $5.99/month for 5 keywords, but you can trial it for free for 4 days.

Twellow is a Twitter directory that categorizes users according to interest/topic and some list users from most followers to least. Within your account can set up a personal profile where you will be able to show your recent tweets, share links to your websites and create an extended bio. Most profile pages are indexed by Google, so this is also an added bonus of Twellow.

Twellow and Twollo, besides their cute little names, are good places to listen to the issues and questions in your industry, where you can also have a chance to provide appropriate answers. These websites can be one of the first places you hear about new developments in your industry, as well as allow you a chance to build valuable business relationships.

Twitter Tab is an application within Facebook that lets you include your Twitter updates as a Tab within your Facebook Profile and Facebook Pages.

There is a VIP option which allows you to customize the appearance of your twitter page on Facebook, including a background image, and choosing background color, text color, hover color or border color. You can also use your default Twitter background which is what I did. The cost for VIP is $10 for 3 years.

Revisit lets you create a really cool, animated Twitter wall. Basically it collects tweets related to a topic of your interest and will then display them along a time line. The tweets that have received the most popularity will be displayed larger and near the center. It is constantly changing (not static). Click on the this demo for an animated visualization of Revisit in action.

On a lighter note, I wanted to wrap up this 3 part series on Twitter tools by sharing a super funny video about Twitter users. Fortunately, if you are primarily using Twitter as a business-building tool, you don’t fit the mold depicted in this video. But I am sure a fair amount of people will identify with the message ;)

Please share the love if you enjoyed this post or kindly leave a comment below.

Best Regards,

Social Media Manager

Owner of Bee Social, LLC

Filed Under: My Blog, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Twitter Tools for Business Building-Part 2

January 18, 2011 By 4 Comments

This is Part 2 of Twitter Tools for Business Building.

To see Part 1, go here: Social Oomph.
To see Part 3, go here: Tweet Beep, Twollo, Twellow, Twitter Tab, Revisit

The best way to implement Twitter for lead generation is to first build a reputation as a trusted source of information or being seen as a thought leader for your industry-while simultaneously building relationships, remaining personal and approachable.

Pushing out one-way marketing messages about your business isn’t going to work, people won’t listen. You must ask questions, be personal, and engage others naturally within the community.

Once you are the source of value and have earned their trust, you can then offer information about your business services and products. Your followers now trust that whatever you recommend is going to be beneficial to them. However, this type of business self-promotion should be done sparingly.

Also, a good technique is to do a series of tweets leading up to your offer or product. Intrigue them, ask them questions and peak their interest for a few days before you tweet about your service or product. (See Social Oomph post about scheduling your tweets).

Always, always remember the philosophy WIIFM (What’s In It For Me-your customer’s favorite radio station). You need to address what’s-in-it for your customer-the benefits of your products or the great discounts you’re offering, or sharing value-based content and useful general knowledge to your audience. If not, they will quickly tune you out altogether.

OK, on to some more third party Twitter tools that you will find useful.

Hootsuite is a social media dashboard. It is now making strides and becoming more popular than TweetDeck.

It allows the user to monitor keywords, manage multiple Twitter profiles, schedule tweets, and measure their success.

The nice thing with Hootsuite is that you can manage not only multiple Twitter accounts, but also multiple social accounts. The different social accounts beyond Twitter are:

  • facebook
  • facebook pages
  • linkedin
  • ping.fm
  • wordpress
  • myspace
  • foursquare

It also has an easy to follow custom interface with social streams, tabs and columns.

You can track your success in real-time with click-through statistics and easy report exporting.

Hootsuite has a built -in reputation management pane called Mentions. This a great place to track mentions of your brand, your industry and your keyword searches.

Currently the iPhone and Android have apps for Hootsuite, so you can manage your accounts on the go.

TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to Twitter.

If you have a Twitter account, you already have a TwitPic account automatically.

Comments to photographs are sent as a reply tweet.

Twitpic URLs are already short, making it unnecessary to use URL shortening.

You upload your picture via your phone, an iPhone app, or through a Web interface — and TwitPic posts a link to the picture to your Twitter account. So when you tweet it, it shows up as a shortened URL with your message. When users click the link they will be taken to your TwitPic profile to view it.

Bit.ly is a URL shortner that can post directly to Twitter.

If you share a lot of links on Twitter, bit.ly makes it a fast process by letting you shorten the URL and post to Twitter within the same screen.

You can post to multiple Twitter accounts using one bit.ly account.

Bit.ly lets you attach a brief code to the shortened URL, which then allows you to track how many people click on the link. You can also see more detailed information about those users, such as the country where they’re located and the time of day they clicked.

If you found this information useful, please share the love on your social media sites or kindly leave a comment below.

Respectfully,

Social Media Manager

owner, Bee Social, LLC

Filed Under: My Blog, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Twitter Tools for Business Building-Part 1

January 17, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is Part 1 of a 3 Part series called Twitter Tools for Business Building.

To view Part 2, go here: HootSuite, Twitpic, bit.ly
To view Part 3, go here: TweetBeep, Twellow, Twollo, Twitter Tab & Revisit

Twitter is an extremely effective tool for free marketing and lead generation for your business. This is the first part of my 3 part series in which I will be writing about various third-party Twitter Tools which will help maximize exposure to your blog and/or your business. Whether you are a novice or veteran Twitter-er, you will find your favorite tool and easily be able to implement it into your marketing efforts.

So on to Strategy #1….


Social Oomph (formerly tweetlater)-This is an incredible way to save time and boost your Twitter productivity by scheduling your tweets.

Some of the features I especially like and that are included in the FREE version of this service are:

  • Schedule Tweets: Plan It, Set It & Forget It! Like an autoresponder, you can keep your Twitter and StatusNet streams ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when you know your international followers are online and you’re asleep. An effective scheduling strategy is to prepare a series of tweets that lead up to a link you want your followers to click through.
  • Save and Re-Use Drafts: Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing. Save a draft once and use it as a template for updates on Twitter and StatusNet accounts.
  • Send DM’s (Direct Messages) to new followers: Automatically send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them and your future interaction with them, ask them to connect with you on facebook, or simply thank them for choosing to follow you. You can create different versions of your Direct Message to your new followers also.
  • URL shortening: This is an in-house URL shortening service, dld.bz, in which you can track the clicks on your shortened links, and get all kinds of useful and insightful click statistics.
  • Follow Those Who Follow You: Automatically follow people who follow you and save a ton of time while your Friends list builds itself.
  • Un-Follow Those Who Un-Follow You: Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is how you prefer to manage your Friends list.
  • View @Mentions & Retweets: With more than one Twitter or StatusNet account it can become a real chore to keep track of your @mentions and everyone who has retweeted your tweets. They make it a breeze by showing your @mentions and/or retweets for all your accounts on one page, in one integrated timeline. Yes, that’s correct, you see your StatusNet tweets integrated with your Twitter tweets.
  • Private Tweet Viewing/Grouping Channels: With predefined tweet channels, you can view the tweets from selected breaking news sites, technology news sites, etc. grouped together for easy viewing of tweets that relate to a specific topic.

There is also a Professional version for the more advanced users of Twitter and who want to take this free marketing strategy even further.

This Pro version includes managing features of all your social accounts including a Facebook and ping.fm integration module, as well as your blog. Another very nice feature of Pro is that you are able to find quality friends to follow by using keywords and further organize and filter these friends. You can discover which of your friends is that special “power follower” that has the most clout. It also has SPAM control, ability to manage several accounts and many other features.

The Pro version has a monthly fee of $29.97. However, there is also a 7-day free trial of the Pro version if you wanted to test drive it.

One other nice thing about Social Oomph is that they have an affiliate program that you can become a part of even if you sign up for the free account.

So I looked up the definition of ‘oomph’, and it is actually a real word meaning ‘spirited vigor’ or ‘sex appeal’. So I thought it would be appropriate to say, “Get out there and get your Social Oomph on!”

Click Here To Boost Your Productivity On Twitter!

If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog in the web form box on the upper right to ensure you receive my next blog post and any new Twitter tool reviews.

If you liked this post, share the love and post to your social sites or kindly leave a comment below.

Respectfully,

Social Media Manager

Owner of Bee Social, LLC

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