It seems counterintuitive, but one of the most sure fire ways to decrease the number of your Twitter followers, as well as reduce the overall number of sales coming from your Twitter followers, is to use Twitter to sell to them. Instead, if you want to increase your sales through your Twitter followers, you need to first gain more followers, and then encourage more of those followers to become customers by becoming someone they know and trust.
Become visible
The simplest way to gain more followers is to become a valuable Twitter resource. First, you need to become visible to potential customers so that they will follow you. In addition to the one-off visibility actions, such as listing your Twitter name on your business cards and at the bottom of your emails, you can become visible to many people at a time by becoming active in Twitter streams where your customer base can be found. View the most popular Twitter users at Twitterholic and follow the ones whose followers are your potential clients. Respond to their tweets as appropriate. View the most popular hash tag conversations, which can be found at search.twitter.com, and participate in the ones that are appropriate to your business.
Provide value
Whether it’s responding to a tweet by someone with many followers or participating in a hash tag conversation, always make sure that your tweets provide value. Answer questions, share news about your company, products, or industry that your customers will find interesting, or offer tips and tricks for getting the most out of your products or other products commonly used by your customers. Offer insightful comments that add something to an existing discussion. Pictures are often perceived as valuable, because they are able to illustrate many things at once. People who see one of your tweets and think it has value are likely to become your followers.
Make personal connections
Once you have people following you, engage with them. Respond to their questions, as well as to thoughtful comments on your tweets. Tweet about your passions both in and out of work. Being real and multidimensional does far more for creating a bond between you and your followers than being a boring business drone will. Once you’ve established that connection, your followers are more likely to trust your recommendations involving your company’s products, which will result in more sales.
Monitor for effectiveness
As with every other aspect of marketing, you should monitor your Twitter followers to determine the effectiveness of your Twitter strategy. TwitterCounter is a resource that will track how many new followers you are adding, and Qwitter is a resource that will track how many of your followers stop following you after each tweet. Learn which types and frequency of tweets produce the best results, and optimise your tweets accordingly.
If you do not take advantage of the many add-on applications that enhance the functionality of Twitter, you are not getting the most out of the time and energy you spend Tweeting. These five simple applications will help to turbocharge your Twitter strategy.
Recognise referrals
When people refer other people to your physical business, you recognise the referrers. People who refer many others to your business are treasured and cultivated, and you no doubt expend quite a bit of energy on maintaining your relationship with them. But what about people who refer others to your Twitter account? How do you recognise who is referring you, and how many people they have referred? The application Brandfluencers works with your Google Analytics account to measure how many people have been referred by each referrer.
Prime time tweeting
You have no doubt learned through trial and error that some times and days get better responses for your tweets. Tweriod is an application that analyses the Twitter behaviour of your followers to determine how many of them are online on specific days and times of days. Ensuring that your tweets are released at those times on those days will put your tweets in front of the maximum number of your followers. The Buffer application is one that can be used to schedule your tweets in advance.
Insert yourself into conversations
Most companies include monitoring for the name of their company or primary product as well as the most common hashtags used by their company. However, this only lets you know about conversations from people who already know who you are and what you sell. The inboxQ application will notify you of tweeted questions including key words or phrases. By responding to questions relative to your industry or niche, you will be recognised as an expert and authority, as well as increasing the number of people who might follow you who otherwise would never know of your existence.
Manage relationships
It can be overwhelming to keep track of all the people who follow you, comment on your tweets, or retweet your tweets to their own followers. How do you know which of your followers are significant people with many followers of their own who could give your publicity a boost if only they could be encouraged to mention you, or which people may not have many followers but are highly committed to your company? The Commun.it application helps you to make sense of your community.
Make it easy for others
Many people dislike straight retweeting because they prefer to put their own spin on things and make all their tweets personal. However, that requires them to go to the effort of composing a tweet to use your material, which may prevent some from doing it. The ClickToTweet application allows you to compose customisable tweets that people can tweet at the push of a button.
Recent statistics show that more than 4 out of 10 Twitter users follow specific companies or brands on Twitter. Of course, you should also be using social media tools to follow your own company or brand, so that you can find out what people are saying about you. But who else is following you? If you’re not building your brand, interacting with your current customer base, providing customer service, developing relationships with key bloggers and media people in your sphere, and building buzz for your events or products, you’re not taking full advantage of Twitter for your business.
Create both business and personal accounts
Even if you’re a one-person shop, you should have both a business and personal Twitter account. The business account, by its nature, is more formal, used to discuss things that are relevant to the business as a whole such as press coverage, product releases, and sponsored events. The personal account puts a human face on the business, and is used for relationship building. Use your business name or brand in your account name, and avoid unprofessional underscores or numbers.
Customise your account profiles
Edit your new profile, and add a profile graphic. This should be your logo for your business account, and a photo showing your face or you engaged in your favourite sport for a personal account. Enter your company’s full name, location, and website. You only have 160 characters to create a compelling Twitter bio for your business or personal account, so leave out the puffery and cut to the chase. What can you tell people that will convince them your tweets are worth following? Remember to tell them what’s in it for them, without sounding like you’re begging for followers.
A picture is worth a thousand words
For a professional image, you should create (or outsource the creation of) a custom background image that can be easily scaled for different sizes of screens, and a custom header image. These images should be simple and easily understood graphics for people who may not be familiar with your brand. So, for example, the custom header of a manufacturing company could include pictures of their products and the custom header for a service company could include a group photograph of their employees. The custom background image for each company would be a simple combination of graphics and short text such as the company’s slogan or marketing catch phrase.
Once your profiles have been customised, you can begin creating tweets, finding people and businesses to follow, and attracting followers of your own. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so ensure that your profile will give visitors the best possible impression of your company before doing anything else.
The savvy business owner knows that social media marketing is a business must these days. An advertisement without the now familiar Twitter icon is virtually nonexistent. More and more, if you look closely, you will see a new symbol making its way into the media. It’s called a hashtag (#), and you’ll see it on television shows, commercials, and in magazines. For businesses, it can be a useful way to break through all that Twitter traffic and get your brand noticed.
If you’re on Twitter, you’ve surely seen the hashtag. It’s followed by a word or phrase (without spaces between the words), and it’s used as a search term to organise tweets around a specific topic or theme. Often when there is an event that is dominating the news—such as the uprisings in the Middle East or the tsunami in Japan—people will use a hashtag so that users who aren’t following one another can group tweets on the event into a single stream.
For businesses looking to attract attention to their tweets, hashtags present an opportunity. All you have to do is input your tweet and put a hashtag in front of the word or phrase that you wish to highlight, which can be at the beginning, middle, or end of your tweet.
Let me give you an example. Suppose you’re a handbag retailer. You might have an idea for a tweet that looks like this:
Summertime and the living is fine. This week we’re offering 50% off new summer fabric handbags.
To take advantage of hashtags, you might do something like this.
Summertime and the living is fine. This week we’re offering 50% off all fabric handbags. Great summer colors. #SummerBags
Note that I’ve capitalised the word “Bags.” Not everyone one Twitter does that, but I find that it helps readability to capitalise each word when you hashtag a phrase.
A cautionary note about hashtags: Be sure that your hashtag is not already in use for something unrelated, or even potentially embarrassing, to your business, or you could end up doing serious harm to your brand. Also, don’t hijack an existing hashtag that might be sensitive. There are a number of ways to uncover trending hashtags, such as the site Hashtags.org. You can also just run a search in Twitter using various renditions of keywords and phrases until you find one that works for you. While it’s fine to use trending hashtags, however, don’t use them in a contrived way or you will diminish your brand.
Lastly, it’s fine to use more than one hashtag in a tweet, but don’t overdo it. More than two or three hashtags will make your tweets look a mess, and people may just dismiss them as spam.
If you aren’t using Twitter for your business, you should be. Out of all of the different social networking sites, Twitter is the one that is the most fast moving. Each ‘tweet’ is comprised of 140 characters. The key is to make the most out of each word that you choose. How can Twitter be used for your business?
Keeps You Connected
Twitter is extremely fast-paced. Once you get your streams going, you will see hundreds of tweets throughout the course of a day. Twitter helps you stay connected with a large population of consumers all at one time. While this may seem confusing at first, this is the best channel to see what everyone is talking about. You will quickly see what’s buzzing and what consumers want. Try doing a simple Twitter search on words that describe your business. You will see what your potential consumers are asking for.
Creates Traffic
Twitter makes it extremely simple to drive traffic to the destination of your choice. With your tweets you can drive people to your blog and to your website. One of the easiest ways to do this is by sending a tweet out when you make an update on your blog. Remember that everyone who is following you sees tweets. It is also important to note that if you use the right keywords, individuals that are searching for those specific terms will see your tweet as well.
Increase Your Reach
One of the best things about Twitter is that you can reach millions of people that you don’t directly know. This is a great way to build your brand and your business. Your tweets will be read by many individuals who, given traditional methods, would never have heard of you and your business.
Quick & Easy
Twitter takes very little time and energy. Once you get in the habit of sending out a handful of tweets a day, you can easily accomplish this task in about a half an hour per workday. In truth, sending a tweet takes less time than sending a text. You can communicate with your peers, your potential customers and your existing customers with ease. You won’t have to spend the time writing emails or making as many phone calls. Twitter can make your life a lot easier.
While Twitter may seem confusing and too fast-paced for many business individuals, it is an important marketing tool. Along with gaining new business and driving traffic to your blog or website, Twitter is fantastic at seeing what people are saying about you and your brand. Twitter empowers you to be very pro-active about your business. If you haven’t entered the Twitter-verse yet, I suggest you try so today!
A well planned and well executed Twitter presence can go a long way towards fulfilling your social media marketing obligations. However, what exactly you should do, what you should tweet, and how you should manage the direction and strategy of your campaign are some of the biggest points that I see potential marketing mavens struggling with day in and day out.
Today we’re going to talk a bit about that last bit – how to structure your campaign.
To begin with, make sure that your Twitter campaign has a target and a direction, and that all of your tweets should move with the central strategy. This sounds obvious, but it can be difficult to implement.
For instance, if you’re going to make a campaign to publicize the launch of a new version of your product at the end of April, then every post you make should be moving you towards that goal. This doesn’t mean that your Twitter has to be totally co-opted by the marketing campaign, but whatever hashtag you’re using for your marketing campaign should not be used for everything else. You do not want to dilute the focus of your campaign.
This should basically go without saying, but make sure that whatever your campaign is, it has a reason for people to participate, and a reason for people to fall in love with it. People have more inertia than you would expect. They are not interested in getting motivated to participate in your Twitter campaign unless you give them a good reason to do so.
A lot of the most successful Twitter campaigns today are including a certain number of prizes, and offering everyone who participates a chance to win a prize. Offer a year’s free subscription to your service to a certain number of people who follow your campaign, or who visit your website from your Twitter and fill out a quick form. When people stand to gain something, they’re much more likely to act.
Although these Brand Pages have only been made available to a certain number of Twitter’s partners and biggest advertisers so far, Twitter has now released a new feature for all accounts which is set to be big news for social media marketers.
Twitter has created embeddable tweets, meaning that you can now embed tweets straight from your Twitter account into your website or blog and your visitors can now follow you, retweet your post or click on the links you’ve tweeted without having to leave your site or go searching for you on Twitter.
Although this might seem like a fairly basic add on to the original Twittersphere, you should not be fooled into thinking that there is little value in this. Embeddable Tweets are a great feature, and there is so much you can do with them to help bring your web and social media presence together.
Here are 3 great ways to use embeddable Tweets to your advantage:
1. Highlight positive feedback and customer testimonials
With the traditional Twitter features you could only promote nice comments from your followers or positive feedback about your business or products and services by adding that Tweet as a Favourite (by clicking the little star). This didn’t really make this Tweet any more noticeable than the rest of the content on your feed and it would soon get washed away in your stream of updates.
With embeddable Tweets you can now place any positive feedback or customer testimonials you receive on your web pages or in your blog posts, meaning that you can now really showcase any great responses you get via your Twitter account.
2. Use your followers’ questions to create content and spark discussion on your blog
If you’re anything like me, you will get a constant stream of questions and enquiries from your followers via your social media platforms. Not only is this a great way of finding out what your audience is talking about and what they want to know, but it is always important to engage with your followers when you can and share your knowledge and advice with them – that’s why they are following you after all!
I have often created blog posts and other content based on an interesting question one of my followers has asked me, but now you can embed this question (or multiple questions around the same topic) in a blog post and give a direct response to their enquiries. Not only does this add more gravity to the content you produce, but it can also help to spark discussion with your blog subscribers and Twitter followers.
3. Encourage your Lead Generation offers to go viral
If you have a great lead generation offer – such as a sign up form for a free whitepaper for instance – then you should already have this in prime position on your website and blog, but by adding this into other areas of your sites via an embeddable tweet you could encourage this offer to go viral as your Twitter followers will now be able to retweet and share this offer with all of their followers. Just imagine how many followers each of your followers has…if you have a successful social presence then this reach should be huge! And all for embedding a small piece of HTML code on your website or in a blog post – what are you waiting for?
Embeddable Tweets look set to truly help the long awaited conversion between our main websites and blogs and our social media accounts, so this is big news for businesses of all kinds – and their marketing departments in particular. Put these three ideas into action and see what you can do with Twitter’s latest feature.
Twitter has recently launched its updated version for .com and Twitter mobil with new and improved features for all users such as expandable tweets and embedded photos and videos – but it isthe business accounts which have really cleaned up through this redesign, as Twitter has launched Brand Pages which allow businesses some great customisable benefits to spruce up their standard Twitter pages.
Larger Header Images For Branding
So, what are the best bits of this new Twitter feature then? Well to start with Brand Pages will now have a much larger and more customisable header image, where you can embed your company logo and tagline for all to see. This is definitely a step up from the traditional Twitter layout, where the logo and branding for business accounts was no different to the personal accounts – which meant that most text and images on the page were hidden by the Timeline and nav bars.
Featured Tweets
Along with this new enlarged header image, companies can now select a particular tweet above the rest of their timeline, which also auto-expands to show any embedded image or video included. This is a brilliant advancement in my opinion as this gives you the chance to keep your most important, topical or influential tweets in pride of place on your page – rather than them being lost in the sea of updates which you will produce throughout the day.
Distinction Between Mentions And Direct Replies
The traditional Twitter could sometimes be slightly confusing for business users, as there are two ways a twitter account can be included in a tweet – through direct replies (@replies) and mentions (@mentions). Both of these appear as @”username” – so for example the IMA receives tweets and mentions which include @InternetMarketingAcademy, – and this happens regardless of whether a user has directly tweeted you in response to something you have posted or whether they are simply mentioning your name in a tweet to someone else. Very confusing if you are using Twitter to prospect and network with your followers!
With the new Twitter set up you will now be able to clearly see who has directly replied to one of your tweets and who has just mentioned your brand in a tweet, which helps streamline communication on the platform in a massive way.
Currently Brand Pages have only been offered out to a select group of Twitter’s partners and main advertisers , such as American Express, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, McDonald’s, Nike and Paramount Pictures – but hopefully by the new year this feature will be available to all business accounts.
Keep your eyes peeled for this new feature as its going to mean increased branding and positioning on Twitter for all business users, and will significantly help with managing the flow of communication between yourself and your followers.
Discussions abound on the specifics of Twitter – whether it’s a gold mine or a waste of time, whether anything meaningful can even be said in 140 characters. Meanwhile, no one seems to concern themselves with the fact, according to Alexa, Twitter has become the 9th most visited website in the world.
Moreover, it can sync with Facebook, users can update via SMS, and there are even firms dedicated to brand promotion and protection via Twitter. What all this means is that used properly, Twitter can be a low-cost, high-impact advertising platform.
Maximize your Followers
You should begin your Twitter advertising campaign by maximizing your number of followers. This is free, and will allow you to get the word out about your site to as many people as possible.
However, remember that the age-old adage of the marketing still applies in the internet age. Nobody likes to be sold to. Everybody wants to know “What’s in it for me?” So before you publish a single post, ask yourself whether it is bringing some value to the people who are reading it.
Moreover, remember that Twitter is a numbers game. Even if you’re tweeting great content, if you’re tweeting it to nobody, then it isn’t doing very much good. So make attempts to follow as many people as possible. But don’t act like a spammer, and follow people indiscriminately. Follow people who matter to your target audience.
Search for top people in your industry, and follow them. Additionally, follow the people who are following them. If they’re following industry leaders, it signifies that they want to be networked and connected, and they will likely follow you back.
Understand Twitter
Knowing how to properly use Twitter’s features and etiquette is a big part of amassing a large group of followers. Hashtags (#) are searchable subject lines for tweets. Search for #yourindustry to find out what people are tweeting that would interest you.
Lastly, understand the basic etiquette of Twitter. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Follow people and they’ll follow you back. Re-post one of their tweets (re-tweet), and they’ll re-tweet you.
Write enough quality tweets, amass enough followers, and you’ll soon find yourself with a potent (and free) source of advertising.
If it sounds too good to be true, consider that when Rapper 50 cent urged his nearly 4 million Twitter followers to invest in a penny stock which he owned 30 million shares of, he managed to close a profit of $8.7 million.
Recently we discussed marketing on social media websites; now let’s get a little more in-depth about marketing specifically on Twitter. Twitter is a social media site that many marketers have trouble wrapping their heads around due to the sparse nature of the posts on Twitter. The first thing you need to understand about Twitter is that direct sales and advertisements don’t work using this medium. Twitter is a site that most people use to be amused and chat about fun stuff. Introducing sales into that environment will simply get you ignored. Here are a few basic strategies that can help you gain a huge Twitter following that will translate into profits.
Be Human! Blokes that only talk business, can’t enjoy a joke and have no vulnerabilities, often don’t have many mates and spend a lot of time talking to thin air. Building a Twitter following is all about making new mates every day, online. Talk online the same way you would to real people in front of you.
Don’t Be Afraid to Be Controversial! A little bit of controversy can drive a discussion. Take a stand on issues that are important to you. Even if some people decide they hate you, many that agree with you will start to follow you and, eventually, buy from you. Don’t go out of your way to pick topics that are sure to get a rise, instead find something you are already passionate about and talk about it freely.
Tweet All the Time! Of course, you don’t always have something deep and profound to say, but on Twitter that is A-Okay. People hop on Twitter to relax and have a laugh, so instead of making deep meaningful statements post a link to a great web comic or a funny YouTube video. People that got a laugh are more likely to follow your Tweets in future.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Action! It is so often the case that the reason people don’t get something is purely because they didn’t ask. Ask followers for re-tweets or site visits. Not all the time of course, but every once in a while this is a great way to gain more followers.
Be Interactive! Talk to people. Comment on their Tweets. Be polite and complimentary. It doesn’t cost you anything to be nice, and it may pay dividends down the road.
Put all of these strategies in place and watch your Twitter following sky rocket.
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It seems counterintuitive, but one of the most sure fire ways to decrease the number of your Twitter followers, as well as reduce the overall number of sales coming from your Twitter followers, is to use Twitter to sell to them. Instead, if you want to increase your sales through your Twitter followers, you need to first gain more followers, and then encourage more of those followers to become customers by becoming someone they know and trust.
Recently we discussed 
