Twitter is fast becoming a behemoth, raking in lots of positive reviews and revenue for its investors even after the IPO launch. The information network, as it would like to call itself has continued to rise and rise above skeptics who thought 140 characters was not enough for any one to say anything. The online platform is gradually moving into the main stream of business operations and practice as it develops strategies and channels to monitize its platform. Twitter has even has a platform to educate businesses on how to use Twitter – Twitter for smaller businesses.
How are businesses using Twitter as an effective online marketing tool?
1. Traffic
Twitter is a powerful way to drive traffic drive traffic to your website, blog, landing page, YouTube channels, Facebook, app download page especilly because the 140 character limit allows you to share snippets of the information you are directing them to.
2. Prospect and Connect directly with your prospects and customers
Perhaps the reason why it is a favourite of music and movie celebrities, Twitter collapses communication barriers between a business or personality and his/her followers. You can directly listen and connect with people directly which was not possible through other means of communication. In fact, Twitter allows brands to become more human. Using the power of tweets, Twitter is a powerful tool for nurturing relationships.
3. To announce sales offers and promotions
Especially because deals and sales promotions do not involve large bugeting and campaigns, Twitter is becoming a favourite for launching short, boost campaigns. If you are in a business where you need to constantly use sweepstakes and promotions to ginger your slow-moving stock, Twitter is the way to go.
4. Promote new blog posts and media content
If you are a blogger, you blog for business or invest heavily in content marketing, Twitter is a great way to promote your content and its ideas. From videos, images, infographics, press releases, articles, tips and tricks, you can leverage on Twitter’s third party applications and the ‘retweet’ button to get your content spread faster.
5. Offer customer service and support to existing customers
The real time news and immediacy ensures that customers will always have a preference for using social media in customer service. More and more businesses are using social media for customer service and those who understand how to use it are reaping the benefits.
You can check out my piece for Punch newspapers on deploying social media in customer service.
6. Event updates using a hashtag
Using Twitter’s hashtag ‘#’ tool, event marketing and promotions can be carried out to allow the Twitter community follow updates, comments and opinons around the event. Twitter campaign can also be ccarried out using this feature.
7. Build your personal brand and credibility
Twitter has thrown up a lot of new influencers and celebrities. Twitter is a great platform to share insightful information, connect with anyone and to build your brand using a global platform.
8. Monitor your brand
Twitter is an ctive community of 140 character discussions and you can use the platform to monitor real-time conversations about your brand, industry or buiness. You can use the Twitter search tool, conversation and management tols like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or other listening tools like Topsy or hashtracking to recieve alerts or track conversations. This will help your marketing, customer service feedbck and to guide management decisions about your brand.
9. Turn Tweets into Testimonials
People willingly offer praise and criticisms on Twitter and using both negative and positive emotions into an opportunities for brand growth. While you can offer helpful tips, emphatize and solve customer service issues, you can also leverage positive reviews as a testimonial for your product or service.
10. Crises response
A significant percentage of social media crises are fueled and spread using tweets. Being on Twitter allows you to disciver product or consumer-related problems, issues and concerns. You ability to respond quickly and responsively depends on how fast you can spread your response and being on Twitter already gives you a head start.
There are lots of success stories and case studies that shows how businesses have used Twitter to power their businesses. For more insights and tips you can follow twitter’s official handles; @TwitterAds for
Twitter Advertising tips and @TwitterSmallBiz for tips for maximizing the use of Twitter for Business.
Which other creative ways can you use Twitter?
Enjoy the infographic below;
