Marketing on Twitter

Yesterday I told you why I thought Twitter is important.  Today, let's talk about marketing on it.

The internet is full of articles, blog posts and thoughts and opinions about marketing on Twitter.  I have no intention of rehashing all that.  It's all out there, much of it is very well written and soundly reasoned.  Besides, there is so much information out there that one could (and several have) devote an entire blog to the subject.   I want my blog to deal with all sorts of marketing issues.  So to get started I suggest you Google the topic and clear the afternoon to read all that you'll find.  Much of it is repetitive but there are a lot of great ideas out there.

You will read about it being a great medium for positioning yourself as an expert, provided you post the right content.  The wrong content (example: openly blatant marketing messages) will get you "unfollowed" in a heartbeat.  Read about this point.  It is critical.

You will find all sorts of tips and best practices.  Study up on these.  They will help make sure you are  not wasting your time.  

You will find all sorts of examples, companies that have used Twitter successfully, small businesses and huge corporations and every thing in between.  Learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes.

You will also find a whole lot of people who are ready to offer you help, for a price.

I'll share with you one idea I was about to give a local man who I thought was about to hire me.  He didn't so I didn't.  His loss.  His company has an inactive Twitter account and when it was active, it was poorly used.  I was going to get working on that issue immediately, good content, timely opinion, timing the posts correctly.

This guy is interested in positioning himself with the local media as an expert in his field.  His goal is for them to call him to comment on news relevant to his work.   Once we got his Twitter account healthy I was going to have it follow every local journalist we can find.  Television reporters, newspaper reporters, assignment editors, the works.  It would take some research and time.  Many of them would turn around and follow him since he has a fairly high profile in the community.

At that point, we would have a direct line to their desks and we would use that carefully, tweeting our response to relevant news stories, our thoughts on community and industry developments.  We would, in a sense, give them more information and different angles on stories that they may be working on.  That would, I suspect, result in more interviews with him and more quotes from him in the press.

Makes sense to me.  

One last thought today about Twitter:  I read last week that people active on the site are the most hardcore of  people in the social media universe.  They are the early adopters.  They are the opinion leaders on other sites.  They are savvy in the ways of spreading the word.  These are definitely people with whom your business wants to have a relationship, a good relationship.  But every relationship requires work.  You have learn about Twitter and use it correctly.

Good luck.

— Pete Nikiel combines 20 years of marketing experience with clear, forward thinking.  He is available to help out companies and agencies in a number of different ways.  Think of him as your utility player on call.  If you need any sort of help in marketing, branding and advertising contact Pete.  Freelance.  Project work.  Part time.  Work.