Recently we’ve talked about twitter marketing. There are many reasons why you would want to market on twitter:
- Connecting with your customers
- Displaying your human side
- Learning about customers’ needs
- and having fun
Before the Internet and social media, it was a lot harder to connect with your customers on a personal level. Now, it is easier than ever to connect with them and interact with them. In addition to connecting with them, you have the opportunity to display your human side. Instead of just being a faceless company, you have a genuine chance to show that you’re a person too.
Learning about your customers’ needs is a huge advantage in the competitive business world. Now with a few simple messages you can learn what your customers’ needs and wants are and how to meet them. By displaying your human side this also allows you to have fun. You can joke, you can tell anecdotes, and you can be yourself.
All of this sounds really good, but it can still be intimidating to someone who has not been on twitter. So, what should you do?
Your mission should you choose to accept it:
You are to sign up for twitter, and begin engaging with peers and customers in a meaningful manner. I’m going to outline some steps to get you started.
Step 1 – Sign Up & Get A Great Name
If you haven’t already, you need to sign up for a twitter account. The hardest part will be finding the proper name. Don’t be discouraged if your number one choice is already taken. This happens often because of how popular twitter is. Try to find a suitable alternative that will be true to your brand and recognizable to your customers. Some suggestions to help you might be:
- Try using underscores in your name
- Consider article words like “the” & “and”
- Considered using COM in your name if you operate a website
- Prefix or suffix the name with your first name
Step 2 – Give Some Follow Love
Follow at least 5-10 people in your industry! Some requirements for this step would be to ensure that the person you are following is active. It does you no good following inactive twitter accounts. It is good to follow someone with many followers, but you may be lost in the crowd if they have too many followers.
Retweet some of the interesting things that they say. Remember, social media is a lot less “you” focused, so you should do your best to include and highlight others. People love to be promoted even if you don’t have many followers. In addition to retweeting, you should also make an attempt to reply to interesting tweets.
Step 3 – Five Messages To Success
Write at least five well thought-out, non-spammy tweets about your subject. Remember that you only have 140 characters, so be eloquent but concise.
Also include hash tags, this will help other twitter members to find your tweets and potentially follow you. If you are mentioning someone in your tweet, then don’t forget to put the at symbol in front of their name.
When you send out your tweet they will be alerted, because you included their name with the at symbol. Click the following links if you don’t understand hash tags or the at (@) symbol.
Step 4 – Five Jokes To Connect
Write at least five funny or anecdotal tweets, be sure to mix these in with your normal messages, and retweets. After all, one of the goals is to not be robotic! This goes back to the “being human” and “having fun” portions of why you should be on twitter.
Writing jokes or sharing stories from your personal experience are both excellent ways to connect with your customers and peers. In addition, you might receive interesting responses or comments from customers that will help you understand your customers better. Isn’t that one of the primary reasons that you’re using twitter?
Step 5 – Survey Says!
Ask at least one question from your followers. Even if you don’t have many followers, it’s good practice to ask questions of them. Make them interesting questions that seem unrelated to your business. This will allow you to learn more about your customers without seeming spammy. Generally, people like talking about themselves, and this makes for a great opportunity to take advantage of that. If you don’t get answers it is no big deal, but if you do get answers then you’ve just gotten free information from your customer.
Forming Twitter Habits
Continue repeating the steps over the next few days, weeks, or months and I’m sure that you’ll begin to see a huge difference in your twitter marketing, and the results you’re receiving from it. It will take a while to get used to the interface and forming the new habits, but you’ll connect with customers on a new level and have fun doing it.
We hope these steps help your twitter marketing go from “non-existent” to “how did we exist without it?” Let us know in the comments if you have any additional tips for others.