Basic Twitter Marketing Guide

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It is hard to find anyone who haven’t heard, used or seen of Twitter these days. It’s popularity has increased even more within the business world. It is open source of information for anyone and everyone to use. But still some of us are not sure of how to make the most out of it. When I first started using Twitter for my work, I was bit lost, even though I had idea about what Twitter was and how it worked. I put together this basic guidelines for anyone interested in using Twitter or already have account and want to make more out of it.

First step is to get a account. You can go to Twitter and create account. Once you have account setup it is important to customize your profile to something familiar with logos, picture or products etc. Click on Profile next to home on top. Then click on edit your profile. Or click on setting where your picture and account name is displayed. Then you will be presented with options to customize your profile. Click on profile and make sure, if it is for company you have company logo and if it is personal Twitter have your picture. Icons are outdated and nobody likes to follow icons. Use the space for Bio wisely with strong and specific message regarding your business or you.

You can always use your own background image to make it more attractive and familiar.
To change the background image.
1. Click on Design.
2. Then Change Background Image, browse the picture you want displayed and Save Change.

And of course the most important, your tweets. Make sure they are engaging, relevant and interesting to your followers. Hashtag and trending topic are also good strategies to tie your tweets to send your message beyond your followers. Hashtags and trending topics are displayed on right hand side of your Twitter account. Twitter is not only about informing your customer but also about communicating with them answering their query, solving their problem, listening to them and taking actions, keeping close eyes on your competition, following the trends on your industry.

First and most important is always research your competition. You will know about what your competition is doing and may also be able to find a niche where they are falling behind. With Twitter it is open and easy. You can locate their Twitter account through directories like wefollow. You can include your own Twitter account with 5 interest categories. Lets you find the top Twitter accounts with categories. Very effective in finding the influencers in particular industry.

Once you have followed your competitor or subject of interest create a list. This helps you to be informed on what your competitors/subject are doing and how they are handling their Twitter strategies, special offer or other promotion or their weak points. For easier access to the information you can create a lists for each competition/subject so that you don’t have to search for their tweets in jungle of tweets. Here is how to do it. Find and follow them in the Twitter. Then you will get option of create a list. Follow the instruction and you will have the list with all the tweets for that Twitter account.

Once the account is set up following is the next step to get followers to your account. The key to following is look at the number of people they are following and number of follower they have. 1:1 ratio means if you are following that person it is most likely they will follow you back. Finding people is easy, just click on who to follow and type in your interest/company or keywords you want to follow in the search box. Check the follower to follow ratio.

If someone follows you and they are relevant to your business or interest make sure you follow them back and send a direct message. Make the direct message short, relevant and personal.

Hootsuite is important tool that helps you monitor you Twitter. The great thing about this tool is its free and after signing up you will be able to monitor your Twitter performance in one platform. You can monitor mentions, direct messages, searches and Twitter lists by setting upto 10 columns at a time. With the search you can use the keyword related to your industry to see the real time tweet queries and direct them to website/blogs or answer their queries with @username.

Most important aspect for any media or marketing effort is flawless integrating with other marketing effort and continuous and engaging communication. Integrate your social media into other aspects like website, blog, email signature, advertisement etc to get the best results and maximum exposure. There’s ton of tools, both free and paid versions, that help monitor Twitter analytic for your business and it’s worth trying few of them to figure out what works best for your scenario and goals.

9 Tips for Successful Social Media Marketing

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Although everything has been said about it, one gets still surprised by the number of people who have no clear idea about social media marketing. The only thing that people are starting to realize is that it is not a walk in the park to initiate a social media campaign. A good and effective social marketing offensive is definitely as complex as any other media advertisement campaigns.

Primarily, it is not about commercial campaigning, but sustained presence. This leads to new contacts and new opportunities for companies, as well as strengthening their existing customer relationships and branding effects. The following 9 tips for successful social media marketing may contribute to a better understanding.

1. Stay on Top and Update Regularly!

One of the most common mistakes is that businesses euphorically build their profiles on any given platform, are thrilled by how many people “like” it or follow them, and then turn around and concentrate on other things which seem more important at the time, apparently without realizing what kind of damage they do to their reputation and their brands. You don’t have to write a new blog post every single day, but I think it is not too much to ask to update your status on Facebook, Twitter & Co. on a daily basis.

People fail to realize that these messages are the foundation of their relationships in the social networks and that they leave an impact on potential customers who may visit the profile in order to gain an impression of the provider. Irregular or infrequent updated profiles may indicate unreliability or inactivity. And never forget that your competition is just a click away, waiting to convert these potential customers into regular clients.

2. Do Not Pitch!

As already mentioned before, social media is about building relationships and not about troubling some random contact with your newest business idea. Direct advertising is frowned upon and how you get in touch with someone has also something to do with respect. Not everyone who is interested has an immediate requirement but may keep you in mind for future projects. A pitch in social media is totally inappropriate and destroys more than it could ever achieve.

3. Communicate!

You don’t have to comment on every single post or respond to everything which is being said on your profiles. But to turn a blind eye also doesn’t cut it. It’s like in the real world; How can we possibly come in contact with somebody without communicating?

Get involved, reply to comments (where it seems appropriate), contribute to some interesting discussions if you have something to say and time permits.

4. Think, Then Post!

What you write on the Internet is public and it will be there forever. Keep this always in the back of your head before you post something instead spontaneously posting everything which crosses your mind.

5. Handle Criticism with Style!

We all have a bad day every now and then and it will happen that somebody posts something negative on your profile. Let it be there and do not delete it! Unless there is something you have to correct, simply ignore it.

One should also remember that everyone makes mistakes and not every criticism is unjustified or undeserved. React to legitimate criticism with humility and merely explain your position, OK?

If there are several critical comments, it is not necessary to respond to every single one individually. Give a well thought-through general statement and show your followers that you really care about them. And then, and that’s really important, analyze what mistakes you made to prevent them in the future.

6. Link other Content!

Rather than always to post your own content, you can and should also link to post created by others. However, the problem remains that you have to consider first whether the post is relevant. The posting you consider to link on you pages must be related to your own sphere of expertise as well as relevant to your audience. Prevent to be perceived as just another “Retweeter”.

7. Do not just share Business Content!

There is no reason to hide the human side of your company, to the contrary! Is there a BBQ or something extraordinary in everyday life which was photographed or filmed by your employees? Publish it! Such content always conveys a positive image.

8. Set a Weekly Trend

To share something once a week at a given time will set a trend that will be rapidly picked up by your followers. This could be for example a specific content or an “offer of the week” if you run a retail establishment. Trends always spread and will bring traffic and increase customer loyalty.

9. Guide People to Your Profiles!

It’s great to promote yourself through social media but it shouldn’t stop there. It is equally important to draw attention to your platform from the outside. A great way to do this is to create an e-mail signature with direct links or to put QR-Codes on letterheads and business cards. There is also nothing to be said against a “like us” link on your website.