Know this: Twitter can’t be learned in a set period of time. The fact is, learning how to tweet for business gain is an ongoing process, one which involves constant tweaks (yes tweaks, not tweets) to your approach. Twitter is a platform, not unlike the Windows operating system. After years of experience, we still find more ways to be productive with the OS we use.
Prioritizing your business needs for a tweeting strategy
Twitter is a fantastic tool to compliment all your organization’s communication efforts. Your company’s Twitter strategy can be broad or narrow: there’s no right or wrong. What are the strengths of the person(s) managing the account? If they know little about HR, and your HR department doesn’t want to invest the time or department budget to make tweets a big part of their communication strategy, that’s OK.
How to get the business leads you need
If the person posting tweets has a lot of experience cultivating leads, let him or her start a dialog with prospects. He should add followers that could become leads to a private list. Viewing the list’s stream of Tweets, at the expense of viewing less from others your company is following, makes him or her tune in and ready to initiate dialog with a prospect when a tweet is ripe for a response.
Promotions
Promotions work well on Twitter because they incent people to interact and tweet about your brand. There is far too much noise on Twitter, too much social-bookmarking, and it’s tough to get people to mention you by putting your @userhandle in what they write. Interaction is what it’s all about. If you simply pump out links or curate content with boring added comments in your tweet like “awesome article,” few meaningful connections will develop. Instead, make things fun by offering prizes to people that tweet using your handle. For example, ask prospective clients or customers to post about a positive experience related to your brand or value proposition in 140 characters. A random drawing from all those that engage in the contest can determine a winner who is given your service or product, free. Or, give away airline tickets: trips to Las Vegas are always cheap to find.
Tweet for business – Great for Branding
Branding is not very measurable, but the fact is social networks are very strong for branding. Your business is telling its story when you share on twitter, and that may not mean a click-through you can see with analytics tools when someone visits your Website from Twitter. Some posts are not meant to elicit an action: they are sent as through a bull-horn to the crowd listening.
How to handle Customer Service
The beauty of Twitter as a customer service platform is one message can be seen by many. A message with @followername in the very start of a Tweet is seen by your other followers (and the customers costumers). The one-to-many service you provided is more cost effective than the one to one message of email support.
Get a quote from Eric Van Buskirk for Twitter account management or strategy. Beat agency rates. Call today: (215) 268-6690
