A Guide To Using Twitter For Marketing Your Business

One of the latest trends for promoting your business online is by SMM
(Social Media Marketing). This marketing strategy allows you to create
a brand for your business, as well as gain traffic to your website. Social
media like Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and others give you
the opportunity to submit photographs, videos, pod casts, and news about
your company and the services and products it has to offer. The entire
process,however, can be quite time consuming. There is an exception
Twitter!

How Twitter works

Twitter provides users a simple social networking and micro-blogging
platform. Heres how it works. All you need to do is answer this simple
question in 140 charactersWhat are you doing? These messages are
short and sweet, and are called tweets! Your tweets will be instantly
displayed on your profile page as well as be delivered to those users who
are following you. When using Twitter youll have web users following
you and youll be following them. Following means that whenever
theres a new post added to one of your contacts profiles, youll be
updated. And if you have something to post, you will be followed. So,
the more people that follow you, the more will your business get exposure.
However, promoting your business is not simply about adding people to
your friends list. You need to build your follower base intelligently. So,
before you start tweeting its best that you learn about how the Twitter
community works and how you can market your business using it. Here are
a few guidelines to help you get started.

Marketing Your Business Using Twitter

From recruiting, organizing promotional events, and pitching to your
followers, to organizing contests and giveaways, rewarding Twitter loyalty,

adding metadata to tweets, and keeping a close watch on Twitterverse,
there are a few unwritten rules to help you to promote your business using
Twitter. Keep these tips in mind.

1. Be heard: Twitter is a great place to meet new people and build up a
network. The best way to ensure that you are heard is by:
2.
Following Others: Following others who are relevant to
your business is important, rather than simply gaining large
numbers of links. It is recommended that you include your
current and past customers, as well as those who belong to
the same industry as yours.
Importing Contacts: If youve got connections on LinkedIn
or Facebook, a good idea would be to make connections on
Twitter. You can also import contacts from Gmail, Hotmail,
Yahoo mail or your own address book.
Balancing Your Followers/Following Ratio: You need to have
a balance between the people that follow you and the people
you follow. If you have many people following you and you
dont follow them, they are sure to stop following you. If,
however, the reverse happens, you will be considered as a
spammer who is trying to increase his or her follower base.
Some of the methods that you can incorporate to keep this
balance are:

Grow Slowly: Instead of adding new friends at one go,
a better idea would be to first add 50 and then wait for
them to follow you. Once they follow you back, you can
add another 50 friends.
Use Friend or Follow tool: It is recommended that you
use tools like Friend or Follow which allow you to check
who you is following you and who arent following.
Dont Stop Following: If you follow others and later stop

following them the moment they start following you, youll
be considered a spammer.

Avoiding Automated Functions: Automated functions are like
robots. Remember, you are connecting to people, not robots.
People want to listen to your voice, not the voice of a robot.
So, avoid using the auto-reply and auto-follow functions that
are provided by Tweet Adder.
Interacting: By simply broadcasting announcements, you
wont get the respect of many followers, which in turn is not
good for your company. You need to take time to interact
and converse with your fellow Twitters. Give it the personal
touch.

3.

Start pitching: Most new Twitter users have started a trend of trying
to direct you to a website that they want you to visit. This does
not work for long. Some of the best formulas that you can use for
marketing on Twitter is:

4.

Connect>Converse>Convert: You first need to connect to
those people, most of whom you dont know, start interacting
with them till the time that you win over their trust, and
finally make a pitch to them. In fact, it may just so happen
that you need not pitch to them. They may search for you.
Create solid ideas: Before making a pitch to your potential
customers, it is recommended that you brainstorm and create
solid ideas for your business. Put these ideas forward to your
customers and ask for their opinion. This is far better than a
poll or vote. It will make them seem an integral part of your
companys project.

5. Engage your CEO: Asking your CEO to engage in social media will be
quite a task, as it is quite time consuming. Your CEO will surely not

have time to write a blog, let alone reply to queries, messages. and
accept friend requests. Tweeting, however, is different. If your CEO
can send a text message, he or she can surely use Twitter. Twitter,
being a micro-blogging platform, provides your CEO the opportunity to
use this social media as a marketing and PR tool.

6. Add Value: Simply asking people to follow you is not good enough. You
need to give them a reason to follow you. The best way to do that is
by giving good information in the form of advice, answers to peoples
queries, links, and providing special offers only to your followers. So, in
time you become a valuable member of the Twitter community, which
is sure to bring you more followers. Some ways of adding value to your
Twitter account is by:

Announcing special offers, deals or sales: Twitter is a great
tool to announce special offers instantly to a wide audience.
Giving live updates on events or conferences: If you are part
of a trade show or organize your own corporate event, you
can use Twitter to make last minute announcements, or tell
audiences about interesting events that are happening. This is
an excellent last minute marketing tool.

7. Mix Business With Pleasure: Simply marketing your products and
services is not enough. You need to market yourself. In other words,
people want to know youyour personal side. So, go ahead and have
fun. Tell people about your likes and dislikes, your passions, among
other things. It will surely bring your customers closer to you; youll
gain their respect and confidence, which is good for your business.

8. Reward loyalty: Companies have understood that one of the best ways
to add value to their business is by rewarding those customers who
have shared their purchase behaviors with their friends and family.
As a Twitter user, you can find ways to automatically reward loyalty

to those users for sharing the message about your company to fellow
Twitters. However, you need to ensure that they are sending out the
right message to enhance your brand image.

9. Research the market: Keeping a close watch on your fellow
competitors and the people they follow is important. Take time and
make a list of these so that you can keep a daily tab on them. You can
create this list using the Twitter Lists tool. Also, make sure to check
on influencers, innovators, as well as those who break news in your
market arena. Read about their weekend activities and what they have
to say about their brand. This will help you get a better idea about
what you are up against and what your customers require.

10.Target audiences: The best part about Twitter is that you can connect
to anyone in the world simply by sending a 140-character tweet.
However, you need to ensure that you use this tool and target smaller
communities that are relevant to your business. Using Promoted
Tweets is an option. Even though Promoted Tweets are not live for
every user, they however help business users to target their tweets
to specific audiences, taking their business to a whole new level. You
should, however, use this tool wisely. You will only win the respect of
your audience if you show them that their needs come first, not yours.

11.Add your own Metadata: In time to come, Twitter will give you the
facility to add metadata, i.e., notes, location and tags. This is sure
to give business users an opportunity to tag tweets that originate
from their websites, attach their own identifiers, find methods to
reward loyalty, make changes in notes about a visitors on-site Twitter
behavior, and other options.

12.Brand yourself: Branding yourself on Twitter is crucial in order to
build a follower base. Here are a few steps to follow.

Personal branding: Personal branding is just as important as
branding your company. You can achieve this by focusing on
your Twitter handle and bio information.

Claim your Twitter handle: Prime domain names are
much in demand and have now become difficult to find,
and are also expensive. If you dont reserve your domain
name, you are putting your business and personal brand
at risk. Once your domain name taken, you will not be
able to reclaim it. The same goes with Twitter. Twitter
account names are now being treated as domain names.
So, go ahead and claim your Twitter handle!
Fill the user profile: The first step to branding yourself
is to completely fill your user profile. If you want to
gain followers, you need to have an impressive profile.
If your account does not look legitimate, customers
will not even give it a second look. So, before you fill
in your user profile, check other websites and profiles
and follow the same format for yours. Do not market
yourself as an expert unless you are one. It is always
better to put forward your skill set and passions and
brand yourself based on them.
Focus on Twitter background: After filling out the user
profile, it is time to focus on your Twitter background.
This allows you the opportunity to extend your brand
image onto Twitter. This will give your followers a
complete experience. Twitpaper and Twitterimage
are sites that help you to create a custom background.
It is recommended that you incorporate the same
colors, logo and format to your Twitter background
that youve used in your personal or corporate website.
Add information that is not mentioned in your Twitter
profile.

Lead with your company: One of the best techniques of
branding is by putting your company before you. This approach
not only creates a brand for the company but also gives you a
face and personality to go along with it.

13.Establish a Twitter marketing plan: There are several elements that
you need to incorporate to further market your website.

Email signature: Adding your Twitter handle to your email
signature is advantageous. This ensures that with every email
you send out, you may just gain a new follower.
Personal or corporate website: Adding your Twitter address to
your personal or corporate website is another way of marketing
your site.
Blog posts: Another great place to promote your Twitter
account is your blog. Those who read blogs already know
about Twitter. You can put your Twitter address in one of the
sidebars and also mention it in your posts.
Email newsletter: If you send out email newsletters, you can
talk about Twitter in it, or link it to your profile, thereby
ensuring that each email is linked to your account.
Presentations: If you do make presentations, a good idea would
be to include your Twitter account on the final slide of the
presentation and invite people to follow you.
Business card: Another strategy to incorporate is including your
Twitter handle on your business card.
Article writing: If you write an article for a magazine, or a
guest post on a blog or news website, ensure that your byline
includes your Twitter handle.

14.Become known as an expert: By constantly writing about your
expertise on a particular topic, people will soon know who you are,
remember you and will soon begin to follow you. In addition, engage

in Q&A sessions where you can answer all the questions your followers
may have, which further establishes your expertise on the subject.

15.Use third-party applications: There are loads of Twitter applications,
though only a few of those truly help to build your personal brand.
These applications assist you in finding people you can create a
network with, stay in touch with people of your industry, save you
time and promote your content. These applications include:

Twellow: This is a Twitter yellow pages guide that allows you
to find people of your industry that you can follow and connect
with.
Twhirl: This application is a real time saver. If tweeting takes
approximately 60 seconds, then Twhirl reduces that time to
less than 10 seconds.
Tweetbeep: With this application, you have the opportunity to
keep track of your brand reputation. Youll be getting alerts
through email whenever your brand is mentioned on Twitter.
Hashdictionary: You can keep a check on conversations which
also include hashtags on Twitter.
Tweetmeme: This application allows you to put a button on
your blog, which in turn will give your readers the opportunity
to easily retweet your posts.
Twitter Grader: This is a website that ranks you based on the
influence you have in Twitter. It works on an algorithm.
Ping.fm: With this application, youll be saving a lot of time
and effort by sending messages to all your social networks at
once.
Tweetlater: Using this application, you can schedule tweets
which are to be published automatically in the future.

16.Form a Twitter Mastermind Group

There are many groups of people on Twitter, who share the same

passions and ideas, thereby promoting each other as they retweet
one another. These communities constantly support each other
and help each other become more successful. These groups are
called Mastermind Groups. There are a few applications on Twitter
that you can use to form these groups. These include:

Grouptweet: With this application, users can create groups
and broadcast their messages to one another by way of direct
messages that are sent to the groups Twitter account.
Twitter Groups: This website gives you the opportunity to tag
your followers and place them in various groups. You can then
send messages to those groups instead of sending them to each
person individually.