Help and Solutions for Social Media Marketing and Services-Twitter

The second in our series Getting Help and Solutions for Social Media Marketing!

“There is no doubt anymore that social networks, reaching more than 50% of the total US Internet audience, are an essential part of the Internet experience,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Social Network Demographics and Usage.”

Continuing with our Help and Solutions for Social Media Marketing and Services-Twitter is first up on the list. I chose Twitter first, because it’s becoming increasingly more important and more used than any other Social Media today. Before we get started, I wanted to remind you: with every and ALL aspects of your business you will want to be BRANDED. If you haven’t seen our information about Branding, please do so now. (Branding? You say? Well what’s Nike without the swoosh, UPS without the Brown,

Twitter without the bird? –you get the idea)

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
So basically it’s facebook, sms and instant messaging all rolled into one neat tiny package! And with Twitter, the page is updated every second of every day of every hour….. This makes it simple to share what is happening right now! talk about “real time”! WOW!

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking/media sites on the Internet right now. Almost everyone…yes, I mean everyone, including celebrities, local and national news channels, radio stations, Internet marketers and common, everyday folk, have all jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. And, chances are, if they haven’t yet – they will be soon!

So, what makes Twitter such a great tool for making connections for your business? Here are just a few reasons Twitter is the perfect platform for social networking:

Why Twitter May Be Just What You’re Looking For

Your target market is on Twitter. Twitter is an ever growing community. This means the chances are very high that someone in your target market is on Twitter. Actually many, many members of your market are active on Twitter. Use this to your advantage and get yourself in front of them.

The site itself is growing by leaps and bounds daily. With everyone and their brother joining Twitter, its reach is constantly growing. What this means is that you have a larger audience (that’s growing constantly) that you might not have been able to reach with other forms of media or networking.

You can showcase your expertise quickly and easily to tons of people in your market. Because Twitter is limited to 140 characters, you don’t have much space to get wordy about the topic you’re tweeting about. This forces you to get to the point. No long winded explanations necessary. Twitter streams move quickly so if you want to get noticed, you need to come up with a way to catch the attention of your followers quickly.

Target market research is super easy with Twitter’s search function. Now you don’t have to work so hard to find out EXACTLY what your target market needs. Creating surveys of your current customers and leads is a great way to learn these things. Also, with Twitter’s search function, you can easily see what your market is talking about and create products or services that give them what they want.

These are just a few of the reasons Twitter is perfect for business networking. Now, because everything has both good and bad points, let’s discuss some of the cons of Twitter.

Some things to keep in mind while using Twitter: You’re limited in what you can post with each message. You will want to be quick and to the point. You only have 140 characters to say what you have to say.

Twitter streams move FAST!

Because people follow thousands of people at a time, it’s not uncommon for your message to get lost in the shuffle. Repeating yourself is almost necessary – but do so with caution or you’ll get unfollowed quickly. In other words, if you’re releasing a new product, don’t post the same tweet about it four or five times in a row. Go slowly and incorporate it within your tweets throughout a few days time. Excess is easily misinterpreted as spam – so don’t make it a habit to only promote you.

Spammers have found their way in and you don’t want to be known as one…

As with every other Internet related site/program spammers have found their way into Twitter. One way they’ve done this is by using the direct message (DM) feature to blast their websites and businesses to anyone who follows them.  Unfortunately it is hard to completely avoid spammers unless you meticulously go in and block those who follow you that you don’t want to associate.  Auto DM’s can be used but they should not be used as a pitch fest for your business.

Twitter provides many wonderful opportunities to build a network and share your services and products with a targeted and interested market. It is fairly simple to use and there are many applications available that make it very easy to “tweet” from almost anywhere. So get Tweeting!

P.S. Stay tuned for our next post on our Social Media Series: 10 Tips for Using Twitter to Grow Your Business