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. Here is how it works. All you need to do is answer this simple question in 140 characters -What 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 you will have web users following you and you will be "following" them. Following means that whenever there is a new post added to one of your contacts profiles, you will 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 it is 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.
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:
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 you have 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 you-your 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.
Research the market
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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