Since 1999
Twitter which was launched only as a way of telling friends and family “What are you doing?” has now become more of a microblogging tool, a news announcement tool, a networking tool, and of late, a marketing tool.
Yes you read right, Twitter can be used very successfully for marketing.
Twitter is all about communicating through small, quick spurts of content. Any web marketer worth his/her salt who knows how to derive advantage from regular blogging formats will be able to identify the marketing potential of Twitter which looks just like any other blog, but is quicker and much shorter in terms of content.
Though both are about giving constant updates about something, Twitter has distinct advantage over regular blogs. Reading and writing a proper blog post requires a certain amount of time which is in short supply in these hectic times. Comparatively, a Tweet (Twitter post) can be read and written in no time and can act just like an SMS (Twitter is compatible with mobile phones too), thus creating an immediate impact.
But since Twitter is a little more personal than normal blogs, any marketing campaign which is not well conceived can backfire as it can be quite annoying to receive endless updates which neither add value nor are interesting enough.
Here is how you can use Twitter in your marketing initiatives successfully.
1) Never Spam
Spamming has undone many a campaign on Twitter. Spamming here is very easily detected and can annoy the people you are targeting, rather than make a positive impression about the promoted products or services. Things can go viral very fast on Twitter and the news that you are spammer will travel very far and very wide in double quick time.
Instead, make efforts to post meaningful, relevant and usable content which can create enough curiosity in your subscribers so as to encourage them to follow the lead and spread the word, bringing more and more potential customers to your fold.
2) Be clear about the wanted outcomes of your Twitter endeavor
Twitter can be used to drive traffic to a website, or build brand image and create brand awareness, or apprise people of the latest developments about the company or promoted products/services etc. In fact, there is no limit to what you can achieve with Twitter.
But for each target, the strategy as regards to content would be different. So decide what you want to achieve with Twitter in your marketing efforts and focus on that alone. This will create homogeneity in your Tweets and will make your followers understand you better.
3) Create value for your audience
Of the thousands of Twitter users out there you want to stand apart if you want your marketing initiatives successful. The best way to do this is by providing your followers with original and useful Tweets.
Engage your followers by understanding what they want and giving them what they need, instead of just throwing out mundane details. Talk to them, listen to them, react, pro-act…do everything to give your followers with something they can use, and before you know you will have more people interacting with you. This in turn will catch the attention of others and
