Despite being the punch line of many bad jokes (like the ones made by me in our last newsletter), Twitter is continuing to prove itself as an excellent tool for personal and business communication. If you’ve been following the news on Iran’s very controversial election over the weekend, then you’ve seen first hand that Twitter can be much more than a tool for snark and navel gazing.
In my last post I looked at why your business should use Twitter and discussed the basics of getting started. Now let’s look at some different tips for how your business can use Twitter, just like we do here with our own VR4SmallBiz account.
As Part of Your Email Marketing
What does Twitter have to do with Email? Plenty!
VerticalResponse creates a hosted version of every email you send out. You can take the link to that hosted version and post it to Twitter. We do this ourselves - and also see lots of clients doing it - as it's a great way to get your newsletters and other emails in front of an audience that probably includes lots of people who may not already be on your subscriber list.
Note that we do not make any money off people visiting the hosted version, so recommending this is not an attempt to gather a few more pennies from you. This is simply a great way to get more exposure for the emails you put so much work into.
By the same token, you should reference your twitter page in your emails. That way people who are already clearly interested in what you have to say will see you have a Twitter account and can start following you.
Quick Updates
Having a sale? Link to it. Write a new white paper? Link to it. Send out a newsletter as I mentioned above? Link to it. Hosting an event? Link to, errr, you get the idea. Twitter is a great place to say, “Hey, look over here! We’re doing something cool.” This is especially true if you actually are doing something cool.
You can also use a tool like tr.im to create very short and trackable links for your tweets.
And don’t feel like you have to limit your tweets to just describing what you’re doing. Feel free to talk about the interests you have from a business or personal perspective. Link to other resources that may help your customers in some way. Be sure to show some personality.
Don’t worry about repeating something you put in a blog or an email, because most of your customers and prospects are not engaging with all your communication. And those that are probably aren’t going to mind seeing a two sentence message in which you mention something they already know about.
Provide Support
VerticalResponse has a designated support Twitter page (along with designated support twits). If someone on Twitter has a question, seems frustrated with our application or otherwise is looking for VR related answers, support reaches out to them right away with answers and links to resources. If an answer will take too long via tweeting, then support links to other support options that the person may not previously have known existed or may not have used without prompting.
Find Prospects
People will be twittering either about you or the products / services you offer. This is an excellent time to reach out to them with a “we’re here to help” or “have you checked out our service?” type message. Don’t spam people, though. Messaging others at random is not very effective and a good way to get yourself labeled a spammer. And be honest about who you are - pretending to be a customer of your own company will not look good if anyone finds out you’re doing that.
How do you find out if people are mentioning you? Search for your company name at search.twitter.com. Or setup automated searches using a tool like Tweet Deck.
Learn from Others
Follow your competitors. Follow companies you like or respect. Look at both how they’re using Twitter and at what they’re saying to the world. You should do this even if you don’t use Twitter for any other purpose.
And don’t stop there! Sign-up for competitors’ email newsletters and updates. I’m sure their emails aren’t nearly as good as yours, but that doesn’t mean you won’t learn anything.
Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager
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