Whether marketing a website, brand or product line, Twitter is a great way to get the word out. However, selling wares on the website is not the ultimate purpose of this social networking tool. Connecting with others who share interests and passions in life is Twitter's mission.
Communicate with Peers in Real Time in 140 Characters on Twitter
Talking with others on the Twit-to-sphere involves choosing to follow other tweeps, or other people with similar interests. Gradually over time, the user will find his following growing to larger and larger numbers, based on adding follows and followers who choose to follow you back.
There are actual programs available to allow the user to automatically follow anyone who follows them, if one is looking to increase their follower base. Certainly, anyone who has a product, website or service to promote, wants to add the people who are most likely to benefit from their offering. (See 12 Tools below).
Marketing Mingled with Meeting of the Minds on Twitter
Randomly adding people by following anyone and everyone is often not the most effective strategy for communicating here, as so many of the followers added randomly may be disinterested. The worst insult is for people on the site to stop following someone because they believe the person is only there to "sell something."
Here is where the finesse comes in: If, for example,a writer wants to promote his writing via article views, he needs to take the time and effort to be a legitimate user, who converses with his followers on a variety of subjects and participates in conversations regularly.
A writer who writes about surfing in California will not want to focus his Twitter network on the housewives of Vermont. He will obviously be more effective by searching out surfing networks, young people who live on the West Coast, weekend warrior types, etc. When these folks find his articles, they are more likely to read them, click on the advertisements and equally importantly, retweet the articles to people in their respective networks. That way, the writer reaches others by degrees of separation, and can do this with amazing swiftness.
Should he happen to interest a Big Kahuna surfer dude, who has a million surfing-related followers, his existing articles could become an overnight sensation, while he will have exponentially expanded his readership.
Twitter Useful Tools and Maintenance
Twitter enthusiast Abhijeet Mukherjee offers these twelve tips for maximizing the Twitter experience, 12 Awesome Tools for Efficient Twitter. This information can help the new users to understand some of the basic mechanical functions available like using hashtags and Tweetmeme.
Part of the maintenance process is to use Twitter on a regular basis and tweet about fun, interesting or offbeat stuff. People will follow those with entertaining tweets. Some people like to tweet famous quotes, poems, plans for the day, opinions, etc. Join in on interesting discussions and get noticed.
Further, on a regular basis, it is a good idea to check one's following to see which users are not reciprocating a follow. Using the tool, Friend or Follow, a user can weed out people he feels are no longer worth following. Since Twitter has a proportionate limit to how many people a person can follow, relative to how many people are following the user, at some point, the user may be told he cannot add more, and therefore, must reduce the number of individuals whom he follows.
TweetDeck is an application which allows for an expanded view and scope of social media in general. Facebook, My Space and Linked In can also be incorporated into this view as well as other social media sites. Go to Tweetdeck to download the free application for a desktop, iPhone or iPad.
New programs, tools and methods for maximizing the user experience are being developed on almost a daily basis. To keep up with these kinds of developments, following Alltop and Mashable will keep users in touch.
Using a Twitter account can help increase a marketing strategy, provided the user is willing to commit the time and energy into becoming an interesting force and personality on the site. Using the site exclusively for sales can result in losing followers. Find others with common interests and engage in discussions regularly. Use the many available tools to keep pace with new and interesting applications.
References:
Alltop, 12 Stellar Twitter Search Tools (Accessed 4/09/10).
Amit-Bhawani, Twitter Guide. (Accessed 8/10/10).
Dumb Little Man (Abhijeet Mukherjee), 12 Awesome Tools for Efficient Twitter. (Accessed 8/9/10).
Therese Haberman - With a MS degree and 25 years in HR mgmt, in 2005, Ms.Therese began a writing career specializing in children and HR.
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