How to use Twitter for Business. Part 4.
Jan 15, 2010
OK – Now you have set up your account, have sent your first couple of tweets live and started to get your head round the way it all works, it’s time to find out how to tailor your Twitter activities towards business use, specifically:
Use Twitter for Marketing.
Use Twitter to drive visitors to your website. Tweet about interesting posts on your blog, about any special offers, product reviews etc. Are there any free tools, vouchers or ebooks that can be downloaded? Any of these things should be tweeted with a link to your site. If you are sending tweets out via the Twitter interface, you may need to use a URL shortening service to save space – shorturl.com for instance – if you are using our social media hub, the shortening service is included and the tweet will be handled automatically by the CMS.
Monitor your brand and your reputation on Twitter. Use the Twitter search tool http://search.twitter.com to find out what is being said about you, your brand, your products your competitors and current buzzwords in your industry sector. You can set up a RSS feed directly into your Google reader or your Google homepage. If you find somebody trying to find your products or your service, help them out with a pointer. Even if they are looking for a competitor. Join the conversation. Offer help and advice.
Use unsolicited tweets about your company as testimonials. On the left of a twitter stream there is a star icon which can be clicked on to save a tweet as a favourite. Clicking on this will add the tweet to your favourites tab for future use. If you need to demonstrate your customer feedback, send users to your favourites page on Twitter where they may read the independent reviews and contact the tweeter for further info. The interaction possible between a potential client and an existing/previous client is priceless. This method turns Twitter into a referral machine. Referrals are the holy grail of inbound marketing.
Use Twitter to organise events. Tweet-ups as they are affectionately known are a great way of getting to know your followers or to increase your off-line membership. Next time you have an event or open day, tweet about it and link to the sign=up page in the tweet.
Create a hashtag for the event. For instance, the business networking group we belong to use #CN2010. The hashtag can be used by people at the event sending real time tweets or by people wanting to find out what is being said about the event. The hashtag effectively aggregates all pertinent tweets to a single search.
Use Twitter to promote new tools. Twitter users love the interaction available through Twitter and will readily re-tweet anything they find useful or interesting. Any tools you have need to be tweeted about.
Establish yourself as an expert. As well as tweeting useful and interesting information, you should also keep an eye on conversations and queries going on live on Twitter using the afore mentioned search function. Join in the conversation, it is invariably acceptable for you to join in and should be positively encouraged. Offer as much help as you can, even free help. It all helps build your reputation.
Use Twitter for Public Relations.
Develop relationships with bloggers, reporters and Gurus. Reporters and prolific bloggers have very active social networks which are often used for research purposes. Visit industry related publications and forums to gather Twitter names.
Look out for editorial opportunities. Twitter is used by media types and researchers to find additional information and sound-bites for stories. Monitor the search channels for opportunities and set up Twitter lists of industry related media channels.
Direct message reporters instead of sending an email pitch. It goes without saying that the informal nature of Twitter will allow you to send a short concise pitch to a reporter rather than spend time on a formal pitch. Many Twitter users get hundreds of direct messages in their inbox and they can be easily overlooked or cleaned out. Send a quick @username message alerting the recipient of the direct message. This method is likely to be more closely monitored by the recipient.
Use Twitter to pick your timing when contacting somebody. Check their profile to make sure they are not having a really bad day or on holiday and are available for business.
Use Twitter for Customer Service.
Respond to concerns about your product or service. Never try to undermine the complainants message or shift the blame back to them. Always treat the complainant with respect and try to resolve the issue in the open forum. Prospective clients will admire the transparency and will be able to get an insight of the companies customer service procedures. This will give confidence to your prospects.
Use Twitter to manage expectations. If you are extremely busy and have extended lead times, if your offices will be closed for refurb if your computers have crashed, let people know with a tweet. Keep it updated regularly and tell everybody when you are operational again.
Follow back everybody who follows your company account. It is perfectly acceptable to limit whom you follow on a personal account, it is best practice to follow everybody who follows a business account. Use a third party programme such as tweetlater.com to follow back. Send a short thank you message for the follow and don’t try to sell something from the initial contact. Try to make the message look as personal as possible rather than automated.
Track and analyse your campaigns. Once you have set off down the path of using Twitter for business, it is important to glean as much information as you can from the data available.
If you use our Social Media Hub, tracking code will automatically be added to your tweets so that vists to your site and some basic metrics can be measured. On top of this it is possible to measure the following:
- Reach. The total number of followers you have.
- Response rate. The number of @replies you get per tweet.
- Re-tweet rate. The number of times your tweet gets forwarded on by people finding it useful. This is the one to monitor the closest.
- Sales funnel. You need to know how the user behaves when reaching your site from a tweet. You need to track the user from entry point to the point-of-sale.
Our Social Media Hub will automate the above tasks for you.
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