Twitter have proved itself to be one of the most powerful social media sites around. It was used by the people in Iran, who was banned from accessing any other media channels, to tell the world about the recent election and chaos in their country. Then there was Dell who used Twitter marketing so effectively to promote their bargains that they earned an extra $2million from it. Other companies, like Starbucks, also use Twitter for branding purposes.
Ok, that’s all good and all, but what’s that gotta do with me? you asked. We could use their tweeting methods and marketing strategies to help us with our own. So, here are the 6 moves that you need to master in order to become one of the Furious Five of Twitter marketers in your niche.
1. Have a Purpose
Not trying to sound deep or anything, but you need to know your purpose of doing something in order to achieve whatever it is you wished for. Are you using Twitter to promote your good quality products that were now offered at a lower prices, like Dell did? Are you trying to build your brands? Or maybe you’re just trying to be outrageous and famous?
After you decide on your purpose, write them down. This could act as a reminder and a source of inspirations when you’re not sure what to tweet.
2. Set Goals
Having a purpose is not enough. You need to set goals. Make a timeline on how many followers you want and by when. You could also set goals on how much traffic you could get from Twitter to your blog every time you tweet about it. Or maybe how much re-tweets you could get from your tweets and blog posts.
Always remember to have deadlines for every one of your goals so you don’t get caught up on being lazy.
3. Socialize with Big Players (with Caution)
There are 2 ways to go about building your Twitter followers. One is by following targeted group of people until you reached the 2,000 followers limit , and unfollow those who don’t follow you back. Then, follow another group of targeted random people again. You could, of course, simplify this whole process with some Twitter apps, like Tweetadder, etc. I have no problems of people using this method, hey I’ve used it too when I just started. But I do find it just a little bit spammy in nature.
Another way to gain more followers is by communicating with the big players in your industry that are active in Twitter. Send them direct messages, for example @chrisgarrett, @ProBlogger, etc, when you have interesting reply to their tweets. You could even challenge them if you want to, which is exactly what Ashton Kutcher did to CNN to get his first 1 million followers. You’ll get all the publicity you’ll ever need when you are actively engaging the big players. But remember to use this in moderation or it’ll lose its effects.
4. Provide value and insights
Getting new followers is great but you also need to retain the attention of your current followers. Your current followers could be the source of traffic and re-tweets when you need them, whether now or in the future. Retaining your followers through your interesting and informative tweets is one way to do it. Just remember to design your tweets to fit your audience. Dell tweet about their bargains because their user base are used to Dell’s cheap prices. Darren Rowse tweets about blogging and twitter because his followers expect him to do so, as the guy who founded ProBlogger.
But, sometimes you could tweet about some random personal or fun things as well, just to break the pattern. So your audience would wait excitedly for your next tweets.
5. Be Authentic
Don’t try to be someone else. If you are outrageous and adventurous in real life, don’t trim it down for Twitter. Act outrageous and adventurous. Reply with anger if you are angry, don’t try to soften it with less vulgar words. They’ll lose their effects. And if you are building brands, let your brand speak for itself. Let it communicate its personality. Is it dry and to the point, like Dell? Or maybe it’s fun and engaging, like Guy Kawasaki’s?
In Twitter universe, it’s easy to get lost when you could have thousands of Tweets everyday. So be bold and let your personality shines through your tweets.
6. Monitor Your Reputation
Always monitor Twitter for mention of your personal, or corporate, brand as it can save you a lot of future reputation headaches. Usually the complaints would appear on Twitter first before it was brought into a more widespread media, like a blog. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to monitor Twitter manually for 24/7, except you want to. You could use apps like TweetBeep and Search Twitter to help you with this.
These are some of the ways that you could use Twitter more efficiently and effectively, whether to grow your personal reputations or corporate brands. Leave your tips in the comments or tweet this article.
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