Posts Tagged ‘twitter for business’

Tweet Your Blog Articles More than Once!

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Are you tweeting your blog articles more than once on Twitter?? One of the biggest complaints by Twitter users is that they cannot keep up with the amount of content that comes through their Twitter feeds. It’s true, there are a lot of tweets going out these days. If you’re a frequent Twitter user then you know that you miss a lot of tweets on a regular basis. As a business owner this is highly disappointing. One thing that business owners who use Twitter for business can do is tweet their online content multiple times. This post is going to dig into how you can use Twitter more effectively by strategically tweeting your blog articles.

Tweet Morning, Noon, & Night

As we mention above, it’s hard to know when your customers will be most active on Twitter. The best thing to do to ensure that your content gets in front of your target audience is to tweet your content once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then again that night. If you’re not on Twitter all day then you’ll simply need to take advantage of Twitter scheduling tools.

TweetDeck & HootSuite allow you to schedule your tweets. When you publish a new blog article, produce a new YouTube video, or create any new online content, be sure to head out to Twitter and tweet that article (we use the Article Title + the URL + Hashtags in our tweets). Don’t stop there. Schedule that same tweet to go out both in the afternoon and later that evening. This way you stand the best chance at getting the tweet out to as many of your Twitter followers as possible.

Twitter for businessWith the above being said, be sure to tweet other content in between the times that the same tweet is going out. You don’t want someone coming to your Twitter profile 2 days later and seeing the same tweet posted 3 times. Once you tweet it for the first time, you can go ahead and tweet other content (examples might be your old content, ReTweet others, or even ReTweet content from blogs that you’re subscribed to – as long as the article is relevant to your followers. You can even schedule these tweets if you have to.

Recycle Tweets throughout the Week

Something that we like to do on the Catalyst Marketers Twitter account is to take some time once a week to go back through our tweets for the week and ReTweet any of our recent blog articles. You can do this with all of the online content that you create and then promote through Twitter. By going back through your tweets you can copy old tweets and ReTweet them back into the Twittersphere. This allows you to take existing tweets and get them back in front of followers who may not have seen them the first time. By repeating this process throughout a given month you ensure that your getting your online content in front of as many customers & prospects as possible.

Tweet Archived Blog Posts

Have you taken the time lately to go back through those wicked old blog posts? You know the ones from months and months ago. I’ll bet that they could benefit from a little re-promotion. A great quarterly exercise is to go back through all of your archived blog posts and YouTube videos to see what you can ReTweet on Twitter (among other social tools). By getting archived blog articles back in front of people you can drive increased traffic to your those posts. There are probably new people that you’re following who you were not following back when you first promoted the articles. There are also people who simply didn’t see it the first time.

Google Analytics

By taking time to go back through your archived content, determining what content is still relevant, and then ReTweeting that content, you’re going to start driving those articles back into your Top Content for the month. Top Content is a Google Analytics report that shows what pages are receiving the most traffic at any given time. If you’re getting a certain amount of traffic to your website on a monthly basis and then you start re-promoting existing content, you’re going to drive even more traffic to your site as you’re getting even more content in front of your target audience.

Conclusion

If you follow the steps outlined in this post we have no doubt that you’ll drive more traffic to your online content. Whether you create blog articles, YouTube videos, Flickr Slide Shows, or all three, you can benefit from tweeting them more than once on Twitter. Your followers all keep different schedules. By understanding this you can take advantage of it instead of using it as an excuse for not using Twitter. Knowing that all of your Twitter followers are not on Twitter at once simply means that you have to get creative with your Tweets. By tweeting your online content throughout the day, retweeting it throughout the week, and then tweeting archived content, you will see your site traffic go way up.

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@SCVNGR is Using Twitter to Build Relationships with Early Adopters

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

SCVNGR gets it! SCVNGR is a mobile game about going places, doing challenges and earning points. SCVNGR is one of the newest mobile games built around geo-location, and like the 10,000 lb gorilla in the category, foursquare, the opportunities for small business owners to promote their message through SCVNGR are HUGE! One thing that’s really cool to see is SCVNGR using other online tools, like Twitter, to build relationships with early adopters, like Catalyst Marketers. We talk a lot on this blog about the power of Twitter for reaching your target audience, and building relationships with those folks. SCVNGR obviously sees the power in Twitter for business, and in this post, we are going to discuss just how @SCVNGR uses Twitter.

SCVNGR MarketingI guess it was about three weeks ago at this point, when we first heard about SCVNGR here at Catalyst. I read about the New England Patriots using SCVNGR to engage their fans during the “off-season” in the NFL. After a little research, it was clear that SCVNGR is onto something BIG for businesses. We went ahead and penned our first post on using SCVNGR for business. As we do with ALL of our content, we promoted it through Twitter, and included a @SCVNGR mention. It was great to see that @SCVNGR actually responded to our tweet, with a mention, and began following Catalyst Marketers on Twitter.

Since our first interaction on Twitter, we have now exchanged multiple tweets with @SCVNGR. We have even started to follow some of the amazing SCVNGR employees & founders. They have followed us back, and we are at the beginning stages of building our relationship with them. It’s been such a great experience to see an organization going about using Twitter the right way, that we just had to write yet ANOTHER SCVNGR post on the blog ;)

As you may know from reading some of our Twitter-related content, we feel that Twitter is hugely powerful for business owners. When leveraged properly, it can help you reach more people, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately drive sales. Let’s breakdown what’s gone on between Catalyst Marketers & SCVNGR over the past few weeks on Twitter. This will allow you to see how a forward-thinking organization like SCVNGR is using Twitter for business. Hopefully it will help give you a better understanding around using Twitter for your small business.

    SCVNGR Marketing

  1. SCVNGR created a plan & identified their target audience – Early Adopters & Marketing Agencies
  2. SCVNGR built their social media foundation on select tools & started producing content
  3. SCVNGR then began following & interacting with their target audience (Catalyst Marketers being one of the many)
  4. SCVNGR continues to engage with their target audience around content
  5. SCVNGR is promoting the use of their product & helping folks understand the value that’s created by using their product

SCVNGR is doing all of the right things when it comes to using online tools to reach their target audience, build relationships, and ultimately grow sales. Social Media Marketing is a process, and when you have the proper plan, a little creativity, and the right process, you can use online tools to grow your business. We look forward to continuing our relationship with SCVNGR and cannot wait to see how they progress in the future.

Obviously SCVNGR is a smaller organization right now, but if/when it starts to grow, we hope that SCVNGR won’t forget that it all started with that personal interaction through online tools. I don’t think they’ll begin to move away from that, but you never know. Either way, it shows just how important it is to use online tools, like Twitter, to engage your target audience.

SCVNGR MarketingHere at Catalyst Marketers, we were fans of SCVNGR before we started our relationship with them, now that they’ve engaged us, and taken an interest in what we do, we are HUGE advocates. Every time we write a blog post about SCVNGR or tweet about them to our followers, the SCVNGR brand grows. Who knows, perhaps we’ll even write our next eBook, in our Driving Growth for Your Small Business eBook Series, on SCVNGR. SCVNGR created a remarkable product, and they are now using online tools to help build relationships with early adopters, and drive growth – IT’S WORKING. Now, that’s the power of using online tools, like Twitter, to build your brand!

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Run a Twitter ReTweet Contest to Drive New Twitter Followers

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

When it comes to marketing your business through social media, it’s all about engagement. It doesn’t matter if you have 3 followers, if those followers are engaged in what you’re doing, then social media is worth your time. With that said, the goal is to grow the number of followers, while also growing your relationship with as many of them as possible. Once you’ve spent time building your Twitter foundation, and while you’re in the process of building your following, Twitter contests can be a fun & effective way of engaging current followers, AND driving new followers.

Run a Twitter ContestThere are a number of different types of Twitter Contests that businesses can run. Many share similar goals. For this post, we are going to discuss one of the most basic Twitter Contests out there, but one that when executed properly, definitely drives results. Running a ReTweet Contest for your small business can be a great way to promote your content, drive action from current followers, and accumulate new Twitter followers.

Referring to ReTweet Contests as basic, was simply meant to describe the work and planning needed to execute a ReTweet Contest. First, business owners should determine what your goals for the contest are, next you need to determine what actions you want your followers to take, then you can come up with an offer or prize for the winner, while also deciding on how you will determine a winner. Once you’ve taken the time to plan for your ReTweet Contest, now it’s a matter of finding the content that you want to use for the contest, and promoting it through your social networks, mainly Twitter.

Create an Online Marketing PlanJust the other day, I was the lucky winner of a local ReTweet Contest. @VillageInsider was running a ReTweet contest on behalf of @TownCrierBakery in Peddler’s Village. The contest asked followers to ReTweet a specific @VillageInsider tweet by a specific time. Once the contest came to an end, @VillageInsider & @TownCrierBakery selected a winner from everyone who ReTweeted their content. I was lucky enough to win, and I received a Father’s Day Black Tie Cake from Town Crier Bakery in New Hope, PA.

By running this ReTweet Contest, Town Crier Bakery was able to:

  • Drive action from current Twitter followers
  • Get their message in front of each of their followers’ Twitter network (at least the followers who participated in the ReTweet Contest)
  • Accumulate new Twitter followers
  • Build a stronger, real-world relationship with me (and possibly others) – I met the owners of Town Crier Bakery and Eve, the voice behind @VillageInsider. I now know them outside of Twitter and will continue to support their business, as I now feel like an Insider.
  • Drive sales – I bought breakfast with my fiance at Town Crier Bakery when we stopped in to get the cake
Foursquare stats

As you continue to use social media tools like Twitter to promote your business, build relationships, and drive sales, running Twitter Contests, like a ReTweet Contest, is a creative, yet cost-effective & time-effective, way to build and engage your Twitter following. Have you run a ReTweet Contest for your small business? What were the results?

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Be Sure to Thank Your ReTweeter

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Are you using Twitter for business? If you’re an avid reader of the Catalyst Marketers Blog, then you know just how much we love using Twitter for business. With that said, there are effective Twitter strategies, and some not-so-effective Twitter strategies. One thing that we love about Twitter is that it allows you to reach, and build relationships with, more people than you ever could without using Twitter. The key is to find the RIGHT people to engage, and then to engage them the RIGHT way.

In today’s post, we are going to talk about the power of ReTweets, and why it’s important to say “thank you” to those who ReTweet your content. ReTweets are a sign that other people respect & value your content. When someone ReTweets your content, it goes out to everyone who’s following your ReTweeter. That means your content gets in front of that many more eyeballs. The more people who ReTweet your content, the more eyeballs your content gets in front of. There are a few things that you can do to encourage people to ReTweet your content. The first, and most important, is to tweet relevant information for your audience. It’s good to let your personality show through on Twitter, but do not tweet about everything you’re doing (ie. hopping into the shower). Tweet content that your Twitter followers are going to find valuable.

Another thing to keep in mind when tweeting your content, try to keep your tweets to less than 140 characters, in order to leave room for others to ReTweet your content. When someone ReTweets your content, their Twitter username & the letters RT (ReTweet) must go into their tweet. Some people even like to comment on the content that they ReTweet. By you keeping your tweets as short as possible, you cause less work for those who want to ReTweet your content, as they don’t have to modify your content in order to keep their tweet at 140 characters.

When people begin to ReTweet your content, it’s imperative that you thank them for doing so. As we discussed above, you want as many ReTweets as possible for your content (as long as they are coming from QUALITY Twitterers). Just like you would thank someone for passing along your business card to an associate, you want to thank them for ReTweeting your content. There are a few ways to go about saying “thank you” to your ReTweeters.

What we like to do here at Catalyst Marketers (when it makes sense), is to ReTweet the ReTweet…stay with me now. :) If someone ReTweets your content, you can then ReTweet that tweet, and say “thank you” in your tweet. It’s a great way to get your original tweet back into the Twittersphere. Here are the steps we take to make this happen:
Follow @RyanTaft Philadelphia on Twitter

  • Click ReTweet on the Retweet from one of your followers
  • Delete the “RT” that comes up in front of your ReTweeter’s Twitter username
  • Delete the colon after your ReTweeter’s Twitter username
  • Insert the following copy, “Tx 4 the RT on –>”
  • Keep your original Tweet copy & link after the “–>”
  • The final product, our Thank You Tweet, usually looks like, “@JeffMoskovitz Tx 4 the RT on –> Drive Traffic to Facebook with Facebook Window Clings http://is.gd/cpXvI” – If we have room to spell out “Thank You for”, we usually do that. If not, we shorten it like you see here.

The example above is what we like to do when saying “thank you” to those who ReTweet our content. With that said, if you get a lot of ReTweets around the same time, on the same tweet, then you shouldn’t do this for EVERY ReTweet. The goal is to get a lot of ReTweets, so if you find that multiple people are ReTweeting your content, we recommend that you create a generic “thank you” where you add ALL of your ReTweeters usernames to one Tweet and then add “Thank you for the ReTweet”. That tweet usually ends up like, “@AutoConversion @AutoBurstWebs @RyanTaft Thank you for the ReTweet!”.

Another way to thank your ReTweeter is to send him or her a Direct Message saying “Thank you for the ReTweet. Have a great day!”, or something to that affect. However you approach saying “thank you” to people who ReTweet your content, be sure to do so, as being polite is the basis for many long-lasting relationships, and that’s what we are all after, strong relationships with like-minded folks. Twitter is a great platform for building those relationships, but it takes effective Twitter strategies, like saying “thank you” to those people who ReTweet your content, in order for Twitter to work hard for your business.

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Inbound Marketing with Sunbelt Granola

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Sunbelt Granola gets it. They are doing a lot of things right when it comes to Inbound Marketing. Sunbelt Granola is one of food manufacturer, McKee Foods’, brands. Whoever is charge of Marketing for McKee Foods Sunbelt Granola brand is doing a great job. I have to say, my guy Jimmy Matorin from Smartketing, and I have been talking for months about some major food manufacturers who just seem oblivious to Inbound Marketing, Mobile Marketing, and other technology-based ways to connect, and communicate with their customers. It’s refreshing to see Sunbelt Granola making Inbound Marketing work hard for their brand.

Sunbelt Granola produces whole grain, preservative free granola bars. They have identified their target audience as young, active kids and tweens. I’m assuming that part of Sunbelt Granola’s strategy is to connect with their target audience, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately sell more granola bars. In order to achieve their goals, Sunbelt Granola has launched a well thought out Inbound Marketing campaign. In this post, we’ll go through the four most critical steps that Sunbelt Granola took in order to reach, and connect with, their customers.

Identify a Target Audience

Sunbelt Granola claims that their granola bars provide customers with some quick energy. Granola bars are viewed as a quick and healthy snack. Many people enjoy granola bars, but Sunbelt Granola decided to focus on the youth market. I’m sure they’ve done a lot of market research and made the conscious decision that this market had the most potential for them. Now that they know what their customer looks like, it’s time to start the Campaign Development progress.

Partner with a Community Organization

Food Manufacturer Content MarketingSunbelt Granola decided to partner with US Youth Soccer. I’m sure they figure that many of our youth play soccer – it’s a popular sport across the entire country (unlike, say, ice hockey, which is popular only in certain subsets across the US). Partnering with a community organization like US Youth Soccer provides a number of benefits to Sunbelt Granola. With that said, it’s up to Sunbelt Granola to develop a campaign around this new partnership.

If you want to partner with a community organization or a non-profit, be sure to do your due dilligence before deciding which organization is the best possible partner for you. First, identify a number of organizations. Next, meet with decision makers from each of those organizations. Then, determine which organization best aligns with your goals, and your ideals or philanthropic philosophies. When searching for a partner, it’s also important to select an organization that aligns to your target audience. In Sunbelt Granola’s case, they chose to partner with US Youth Soccer, as the US Youth Soccer organization caters to the same audience as Sunbelt, young kids and tweens.

Develop an Inbound Marketing Campaign

As we wrote about briefly above, the goals for Sunbelt Granola are probably to connect with their target audience, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately sell more granola bars. In order to achieve those goals, Sunbelt Granola decided to use an Inbound Marketing campaign. They have also decided to partner with US Youth Soccer to tie in some Cause Marketing tactics. Sunbelt Granola determined that the best way to reach their target audience was to use their own product packaging as a vehicle for building awareness and driving action. The goal is to get youth to connect with Sunbelt Granola online, which they can easily do since Sunbelt Granola has put their website link on the box, along with mentioning that they are on Facebook & Twitter as well. Now their target audience knows just how to connect with Sunbelt Granola online.

Leverage Online Tools to Engage Your Target Audience

Food Manufacturer Content MarketingSunbelt Granola has done a masterful job at using product packaging to promote their social sites. With that said, their job is not over yet, now it’s time to engage their target audience, learn from them, build trust and relationships with them, so that eventually, those folks become brand loyalists and influencers. This ultimately leads Sunbelt Granola to their ultimate goal of selling more granola bars.

Lets dive into the Inbound Marketing campaign that Sunbelt Granola is using to achieve their organizational goals. Sunbelt Granola is marketing their granola bars to youth soccer players because they know that youth soccer players are their target audience. They have partnered with US Youth Soccer to run their Free Kicks Campaign. As part of the campaign, Sunbelt Granola knows that they have to offer youth soccer players something of value in exchange for any actions that they hope those folks will take. In the case of the Free Kicks Campaign, Sunbelt Granola is providing unique codes on the top of each box of granola bars. Customers can take that code, go to SunbeltFreeKicks.com, register, input their code, and take a free kick on the Sunbelt Granola online soccer game. Customers who score a goal, win a $25 shopping spree at Soccer.com (another strategic partner of Sunbelt Granola).

Even if customers do not win the free shopping spree, there are two other offers that customers receive when they enter their code on SunbeltFreeKicks.com. Each code that gets entered earns cash for the customer’s youth soccer club. The website has already integrated all of the soccer clubs around the country in order to make it EASY for customers to select their club. Sunbelt was able to get access to this information through their partnership with US Youth Soccer.

On top of a potential free shopping spree and earning cash for their soccer club, customers of Sunbelt Granola can win $1,000 as part of a monthly cash drawing. They can also win up to $2,500 through two semi-annual drawings. That’s a lot of cash just for entering one code. Each code customers enter is another chance to win all three offers. If I was a youth soccer player, I know I’d participate.

Once there’s a solid offer in place, it’s up to Sunbelt Granola to engage their customers when they start registering at SunbeltFreeKicks.com. Sunbelt Granola is actively adding their target audience to their email marketing list. Hopefully some of those folks also connected with Sunbelt on Facebook and Twitter as well. Sunbelt can now begin the relationship-building process with each individual customer. I’m not sure how Sunbelt is going about this process, but if they’ve set it up with as much attention to detail as they’ve done with the rest of the campaign, I’d imagine they are well on their way to building some strong customer relationships with the youth of America.

Inbound Marketing for a Small Business

Seeing Inbound Marketing campaigns like this really gets me psyched. I love it when large organizations ‘get it’. The one thing I hope to see in the future from Sunbelt Granola, and I know my man Jimmy Matorin would as well, is a mobile component. Sunbelt Granola’s target audience is one of the biggest segments of mobile users in the country. They can roll out a text campaign or even create an iPhone application from their online game. There’s so much potential with mobile, so hopefully they are in the planning phase of getting their mobile channel ready.

If you are not a large food manufacturer with the resources of Sunbelt Granola, that’s OK. Use their Inbound Marketing campaign as your guide. Find creative ways to execute your campaign within your budget. Their are a ton of free online tools out there to help you in your quest. It’s easier than ever before for small businesses to compete with the big boys. If you’re an avid reader of this blog, then you know that all it takes to run a highly successful Inbound Marketing campaign is a little creativity, a solid plan, and the right online tools. You can make it happen, just like Sunbelt Granola!

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Have You Done Your #SpringTweening Yet?

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Spring is here! Have you done your #SpringTweening yet? SpringTweening: Cleaning up your Twitter account to make your time on Twitter more efficient and effective.

A few weeks back I was having a Twitter conversation with @Ann_Donnelly and she mentioned that she was cleaning up her Twitter account. That conversation sparked the idea for this post. Shout out to Ann –> Follow her, she’s great!

Update my twitter profileIf you have been using Twitter to promote your business, then you know that the more time your spend on Twitter, the better your results are. With that being said, there are things that you can do to increase your productivity on Twitter. As a business owner, time is a critical resource and anything you can do to make better use of your time, is worth pursuing. Now, sometimes you have to spend time, to create time. What I mean by this is, by taking a few minutes to clean up your Twitter account every few months, you will be able to make better use of Twitter for business, which ultimately saves you time on an on-going basis and adds more value to your business. Things change so fast in the online world, and if we don’t take a second to make occasional updates to our social media profiles, we risk losing out on potential opportunities.

Here are a few things that you can consider when completing your #SpringTweening this year:

  • Create lists and/or groups of key customers, competitors, other local merchants who you want to actively follow and engage
  • Update your Profile Bio if anything needs a refresh. Are you using your keywords in your Twitter profile? You should be.
  • Go through the list of people you’re following and remove anyone who isn’t active or doesn’t make sense for you to follow any longer
  • Use tools like TweepSearch to find new relevant followers for your small business and begin following those folks – hopefully they will follow you back

By taking these steps every few months, you can be much more productive on Twitter. By creating lists or groups, you can easily follow a select set of individuals. At least one list should be comprised of high value customers, so that you can actively engage those folks. Updating your profile will allow more relevant people to find and follow you. Removing followers who no longer make sense for your business will remove some of the “noise” in your Twitter feed and allow you to focus on your most important connections. Finally, finding and using new Twitter tools like TweepSearch allow you to get more out of the time you spend on Twitter. TweepSearch allows you to search for, and connect with, your specific targets. Hopefully you can find the time to do your #SpringTweening in the next few weeks. If you do, you’ll make better use of Twitter for business.

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Tweet First, then Follow

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Before jumping into using any online social tools for business, it’s imperative that you first create a Plan for how you will use each tool. Due to how easy it is to get started using so many of the free online tools out there today, some business owners jump right in with planning properly. Sometimes that works, but more times than not, it leaves business owners with more questions than answers. When you have a plan, you have a foundation, you have goals setup that you are working to accomplish, and you have time requirements in place for how long you’ll spend using each online tool. When constructing a building for your business, you create a solid foundation before you start designing the interior and putting products on the shelves. This same principle holds true when you do start to use online social tools for business.

For this post, I’d like to focus on Twitter, but the principles can be spread to other online social tools as well. Twitter for business is one of the best uses of your time, as Twitter helps you reach and connect with your target audience, share ideas and educational content, and drive traffic to your blog and/or website. With that said, sometimes business owners get so caught up in getting on Twitter and building a large QUANTITY of followers, that they forget to first setup a foundation that can support such a large following.

Get followers on TwitterAs I’m sure many of you know, when it comes to your home, foundation problems are the last thing you want to hear from a contractor. A strong foundation provides the stability for your home, and the same is true for your Twitter profile. You might be saying, well that sounds good in theory, but how do I build a “foundation” on an online platform like Twitter? Great question. When I say, build a foundation on Twitter, I mean, find your voice, determine what you want to tweet about, figure out what your goals for Twitter are, so that your future actions are a direct result of trying to accomplish those goals, build out your profile, add an image, and then, actually start tweeting. Notice I didn’t say, “start following people”. There’s a reason for that…

When it comes to following people on Twitter, there are a few key things that QUALITY followers look for in a Twitter profile before following someone. A few of those attributes are:

  • Interesting and fully filled out Twitter Profiles – Use your profile to describe what business you’re in, what you will be tweeting about, and any other information that you think would be relevant to the type of followers you are trying to attract
  • Profile picture – Here at Catalyst Marketers we like to put a face behind the name, so we Tweet from @RyanTaft and I have a picture of myself up there, instead of a company logo. Some people differ on this subject, but I like the effect a personal image has when it comes to attracting followers.
  • A long list of quality tweets – people want to see what you’re tweeting about and who you are interacting with on Twitter.
  • Number of followers you have versus the number of people you’re following

Your foundation on Twitter is your profile and your tweets. When you first start out on Twitter, most people search for others to follow and hope that some of those folks will start to follow them back. What they don’t realize is that when someone is checking out your profile after you’ve followed them, they are looking for the attributes listed above. Now, obviously you won’t fit the criteria of the last attribute because you are a new user, so you don’t have any followers. With that said, I think that the weight put on number of followers is much less than the weight put on a professional profile and your Twitter content or tweets.

Setup a Twitter account for my businessMost of the time, people understand that you may be new to Twitter, so you don’t have a ton of followers, but if you also have a semi-filled out profile, with no profile picture (whether is a logo or personal image), AND hardly any tweets, then it’s likely that the majority will assume that you’re not an active Twitter user and move on without following you. NOW, if you’re just starting to use Twitter for business and you create a plan for what you’re hoping to achieve through Twitter, fill out your profile, upload an image, and start tweeting on a regular basis, then after 1 – 2 weeks, you’ll have 100+ tweets (hopefully), which is good for a new user. Now, as long as what your tweeting about appeals to your target followers (which is a post for another day), you’re more likely to attract those folks.

Once you’ve built out your profile and you’ve been tweeting for a few weeks, now it’s time to get out there and start searching for people to follow because you’ve successfully built your foundation. Follow industry leaders and follow your target customers. Follow anyone who makes sense for your business (keeping your goals in the back of your mind). When those folks see that you’re following them and they go to check out your profile, they are not going to see an empty lot, they are going to see a strong foundation and a commitment for building something great. You are more likely to attract those folks to follow you back because you took the time to tweet first, then follow.

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No Time for Twitter? Use TweetDeck to Save Time

Monday, March 29th, 2010

As many of you know, here at Catalyst Marketers, we absolutely love using Twitter for business. Twitter is a great tool for reaching customers and prospects, building relationships with those folks, educating your followers on your business values, products, and services, and ultimately driving sales. Hopefully you have been using Twitter to promote your small business. If you’ve been using Twitter, than you know that success on Twitter has a correlation with your time commitment to using the tool. There are ways to make your Twitter efforts more efficient. If you are looking for a more efficient way to manage your Twitter efforts, then you should check out TweetDeck.

How do I use TweetDeckTweetDeck is a social media browser. It allows users to manage their social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace. If you’re using Twitter for business, you can use TweetDeck to manage your efforts. We use TweetDeck to manage @RyanTaft on Twitter. At this point, we are not using TweetDeck to manage our Facebook or LinkedIn efforts, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. You can download TweetDeck for free and begin using it within minutes.

If you use TweetDeck, you can perform just about every one of the same functions that you can perform on Twitter.com. With that said, on top of those standard functions, TweetDeck offers additional features for Twitter management. A few of the main reasons why TweetDeck is one of the most efficient Twitter management tools are:

Column View on TweetDeck

TweetDeck allows for multiple views within the same main viewing window. TweetDeck achieves this through Columns. TweetDeck users can create columns for their followers, direct messages, mentions, a saved search on their business name or industry specific hashtags. TweetDeck users can even group their most loyal customers who follow them on Twitter into a column, which makes listening closely to what those key followers say, much easier. Column views allow TweetDeck users to see Twitter activity on multiple levels. This makes interacting with your followers much more manageable.

A prime example on how TweetDeck makes managing your conversations on Twitter is –> say you receive a direct message from a follower, without TweetDeck, you have to check the direct message through your email account. If you want to direct message back, you click the link in your email, pull up your Twitter account (login if you haven’t setup your browser to remember you on Twitter), and then craft and send your message. Through TweetDeck, if you have a direct message column (which comes standard when you download TweetDeck), you can send and receive direct messages right through one viewing window. A new direct message that comes in is populated in the direct message column. To send a direct message back, you simply hover over the follower’s image icon and click the direct message icon. The TweetDeck text input area opens and you are ready to craft and send your direct message. No more going from email to Twitter for direct messages. These are just a few of the reasons how Column Views on TweetDeck allow you to make better use of your time on Twitter.

Built in URL Shortener & Image Upload

Since Twitter’s inception a few years back, and much more so recently, people have been building tools to make Twittering more efficient, more fun, and more effective. TweetDeck is one of those tools. Tools like bit.ly, a url shortener, and TwitPic, a photo sharing tool, are other examples of Twitter tools. Many times, Twitter tools are stand-alone, in that you have to go out to a separate website (ie. http://bit.ly) to use the tool. What TweetDeck has done is integrated other Twitter tools into it’s platform, which is in part what helps make TweetDeck so effective.

Shorten my url for twitterThrough TweetDeck, users can type or paste a full URL into the Twitter text input area and TweetDeck, through it’s integration with bit.ly (or other URL shorteners) will automatically turn your link into a short url. No more copying the URL that you want to share on Twitter, navigating to http://bit.ly in your web browser, pasting the URL into the URL input area, and then copying/pasting your short url into Twitter. Now, simply copy/paste your full URL into TweetDeck and everything is done for you.

TweetDeck does the same with photos. Simply drag a photo from your computer into TweetDeck and it automatically prompts you to upload and host your photo on TwitPic (or other photo sharing tools). TweetDeck then creates a URL for your image and you can tweet it to the world. Your followers can then click that URL and it will take them to your photo page on TwitPic. TweetDeck provides an easy way to share and view photos on Twitter.

There are other great benefits to TweetDeck. Some things require visualization for people to get the full effect. We are actually doing a webinar on TweetDeck this week. We are going to go into more detail on how to use TweetDeck and what the benefits are. After the webinar airs, we will be creating a video demo from the webinar and adding it to this post. Check back to this post in a week or two to watch the video OR subscribe to Catalyst Marketers blog to receive email updates each time a new post is published.

OH, and if you want information on attending the TweetDeck webinar this Thursday, then simply become a fan of Catalyst Marketers on Facebook. We have the TweetDeck webinar information on our fan page.

TweetDeck on mobile phoneAnother thing that’s great about TweetDeck is that you can use it on your mobile phone. Downloading TweetDeck for your mobile phone is free and really easy. TweetDeck is still evolving and definitely has its limitations. With that said, it’s one of the better Twitter management tools out there. Like other online social tools, TweetDeck will continue to evolve as user needs change. Definitely consider using TweetDeck to make communicating with customers and prospects on Twitter more manageable.

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Tweet Us with ANY Questions

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Does your company sell a set of products or services that you find customers have more questions about than other products & services that you offer? Sometimes certain products and services require a bit more explanation. At the point of sale, a customer may not know enough to ask specific questions (you don’t know what you don’t know, right?). After the sale occurs, your customer begins using the product or service and BOOM, he runs into a situation whereby he needs to ask someone a question.

If these situations occur on a fairly regular basis at your company, I’m sure you’re either getting a phone call from your customer or he’s going to be stopping back into the store to talk with someone. Wouldn’t it be great if you (or an employee who you delegate) could answer all product and service related questions at one time each day, instead of being interrupted throughout the day from each customer who has a question? For those of you who are shaking your heads YES, then Twitter might be your answer.

I know there are people out there who still don’t believe in Twitter for business, but I certainly know how great it works for Catalyst Marketers and our clients. We love Twitter here at Catalyst Marketers. There are so many opportunities that Twitter creates for small (and large) businesses. We have written about Twitter on this blog before, so if you’re a Catalyst Marketers blog subscriber, then you’ve heard all of this before. If you’re still on the fence about using Twitter for business, then do some research, ask other business owners who you know are using Twitter, and you may even want to check out these posts from us, Dell Does Twitter, Do You?, or Is Gmail Down? I’ll Twitter it. For those of you who have been using Twitter for business, now you may have a new use for the micro-blogging tool, answering customer product & service-related questions.

Social Media Marketing TwitterNow, I know some of you may say, “well, I’ve been using Twitter for Customer Service already”. If so, that’s great. You rock! With that said, you still may find some value in this post, so stay with me.

To successfully roll out this program, begin advertising it within the store, say through printing small signs or including a message on your store bags. The message may simply read, “Tweet us @Your_Company with any questions”. You can then reinforce this message during the point-of-sale. Be sure to educate your employees on this new way of providing customer service. Answer any questions they may have and arm them with answers to possible questions that customers may have (ie. Do I need a Twitter account to tweet with you?). This way, when customers are paying for a product or service that your employees know prompts a lot of customer questions, he/she can explain to your customer that if when she gets home, she has any questions at all, that she can log onto Twitter and tweet @Your_Company her question. Inform your customer that someone will respond to the tweet within 24 – 36 hours.

There are multiple advantages to handling customer questions through Twitter:

  1. By explaining to customers how they can best get their questions answered, you’ve alleviated any anxiety
  2. Having customers tweet their questions allows you or your employees to log into your company Twitter account and respond to questions all at once, instead of throughout the day
  3. In your response, you may want to include a custom hashtag like #CompanyName_CustomerQuestions or something like that. This way people can follow your hashtag and review questions and answers from previous customers. This may save them from having to ask the same question that’s already been answered.

Here at Catalyst Marketers, we love Twitter for business. We think it’s a fantastic online social tool. Hopefully you find the value in Twitter for business as well. Twitter for Customer Service is one of the many ways to leverage the tool. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about using Twitter for business.

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Don’t Use All 140 Characters in Your Tweets

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Are you currently using Twitter for business? If so, congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Twitter is a great tool for connecting with customers, prospects, and other individuals who share similar interests. It’s also a great way to promote your online content, events, products, and services.

For those of you who might be just getting started with Twitter, you may or may not know that Twitter only allows you to input 140 characters when creating a new tweet. This means your tweets have to be concise. You need to communicate your message in as few words as possible.

Follow @RyanTaft Philadelphia on TwitterRetweeting is a process whereby another Twitter user takes what you have tweeted and tweets it out to his/her Twitter followers. You can tell when something has been retweeted when a tweet is prefaced by the capital letters RT. The “RT” is usually followed by the original author’s username. The image to the right shows that @KratzPR retweeted my original tweet.

Retweets can make a huge impact in your success on Twitter. If someone takes time to ReTweet what you have to say, they are endorsing you. They are also exposing you and your tweet to all of their Twitter followers. This means that you may acquire a few new Twitter followers. Now imagine if one or a few of these new followers likes your tweet and decides to ReTweet it as well…Now we are really cooking. Welcome to the power of viral marketing.

The biggest key to getting others to ReTweet your content is to tweet information that your followers will find relevant and valuable. The next biggest key to getting others to Retweet content is to make sure you don’t use all 140 characters in your tweet. For each tweet, try to leave at least 10 characters out of your tweet. This way, when I go to ReTweet you, and Twitter automatically populates the “RT” characters and your username, I won’t have to alter your tweet in any way. If you use all 140 characters and I try to ReTweet you, I’m going to max out on my 140 character limit. The easier you make it for others to ReTweet you, the more likely they are to do so.

Twitter is a great tool for small businesses. By learning little tricks like this, success with Twitter for business will be much more likely.

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