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.
There 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.
Just 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
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?
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:
Sunbelt 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.
Sunbelt 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.
If 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 
As 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…
Most 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.
TweetDeck 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 
Through 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.
Another 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. 
Now, 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. 
Retweeting 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.
Do you remember using that Emergency Call List when your business was going to have to stay closed on a normal working day? You know, with each new employee you bring on, and for every old employee who leaves, you update that list, print it out, and make sure everyone knows the procedure. Usually it starts at the top with the owner or manager deciding if their store will open on a day where weather or other emergency factors come into play. Once the decision is made, the owner calls the next person in line, then that person is in charge of calling the next person, and so on. 
Before the advent of using online social tools for business, there was really no way of communicating to customers that a store would be closed for the day. Granted, on days like the Philadelphia area had on Saturday, many people aren’t going out shopping in the first place. With that said, what if you’re a doctor’s office or another type of business where customers have an appointment setup on a day that’s in question? Well, you’d have to pay someone to answer the phone and unless you have a redirect system in place, that individual would probably have to go into the office. Obviously, that’s dangerous during bad weather days. Now, all of that has changed due to more and more businesses using online social tools to communicate with customers. A big key to this is also the comfort which customers have in using those same tools to communicate with businesses. 
