Twitter marketing
- Thread starter japancool
- Start date
I've got to admit, twitter can be really useful, but 7/10 people who follow you dont really care about your business at all. A good way of getting people from twitter to your website is through a service called Pluggio, its free and online based and allows you to send a direct message, containing maybe a link to your website or just a thank you message, to anyone who follows your account. If you need any help with this or any other social media and techy stuff please get in touch! Cheers
Sent from my GT-I9100 using UK Business Forums
Sent from my GT-I9100 using UK Business Forums
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IMHO This hints at a far better use of social media than marketing your products/services...
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- Original Poster
- #5
My day job is as an IT consultant, I'm fine with techy stuff, thanks.
What I want to know is how people use Twitter to market their products. What do you tweet? How do you engage your audience? How do you get an audience?
A few sites I've looked in that have Twitter feeds seem to do nothing more than post marketing messages and special offers. Does that work? My gut feeling tells me it's not the best way to use it.
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You're right, don't just tell people what you have for sale, but engage. If for example you were a hairdresser in Glasgow look for people in Glasgow who tweet. They may tweet saying 'anyone recommend a hairdresser is Glasgow' and you could pop in and say Hi!
This can all be done using the search bar on the top right hand corner. Social Media is meant to be something like 75% social / 25% sales so don't go on there and sell sell sell.
If you want more ideas of what you can tweet about then drop me a line and I can send you an article that shows you what you can talk about and who you can talk to
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- Original Poster
- #7
Thank you for your reply Hazel. However, don't take this the wrong way, but so far, the only people who have replied to this thread seem to be people who sell marketing services, and no one who has actually successfully applied it to a real business.
While your points of view are useful, and it's worth hearing what marketing professionals have to say on the subject, it's also a bit like asking a manufacturer if their product is any good. Unless their name is Ratner, they're obviously going to say yes. You all stand to potentially gain something from promoting a "yes" answer.
I'm looking for what the consumer thinks, i.e. the businesses who are using Twitter successfully.
While your points of view are useful, and it's worth hearing what marketing professionals have to say on the subject, it's also a bit like asking a manufacturer if their product is any good. Unless their name is Ratner, they're obviously going to say yes. You all stand to potentially gain something from promoting a "yes" answer.
I'm looking for what the consumer thinks, i.e. the businesses who are using Twitter successfully.
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It's useful for the following:
For the business you're talking about which I'm guessing is those gundam things from before I can see it being worthwhile to a degree but not the sort of thing you'd have a dedicated employee for.
I'd just try and build a targeted following around your products - run searches for people who are talking about it, characters etc and follow them.
If you can get them to become almost like your promotional team who share your blog posts, retweet your special offers etc then it's all part of the marketing mix.
You might also be able to use it to get in contact with bloggers who run Gundam blogs and get yourself some links / mentions / banner ads or whatever.
I doubt however it will bring direct sales, so if that's what you're looking for then spend your time budget / elsewhere.
- Creating awareness
- Promoting content
- Pushing promotions
- Answering customer queries
For the business you're talking about which I'm guessing is those gundam things from before I can see it being worthwhile to a degree but not the sort of thing you'd have a dedicated employee for.
I'd just try and build a targeted following around your products - run searches for people who are talking about it, characters etc and follow them.
If you can get them to become almost like your promotional team who share your blog posts, retweet your special offers etc then it's all part of the marketing mix.
You might also be able to use it to get in contact with bloggers who run Gundam blogs and get yourself some links / mentions / banner ads or whatever.
I doubt however it will bring direct sales, so if that's what you're looking for then spend your time budget / elsewhere.
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- Original Poster
- #9
I already do all of that via FB - I've got relationships with one or two prominent fan bloggers who help promote us, that's where a lot of our exposure comes.
I think it'll be especially useful if we're at shows where new products are being released.
I guess the first thing I need to do is see what people are tweeting about around the subject first. A new TV show with accompanying model line is being released in October, so it might be a good time to start tweeting, as there will be stuff to talk about.
I'm new to Twitter, so I'm trying to understand it and the community. My competitors aren't using it, so it'd be good if I can get a leg up on them.
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We have found that twitter seems to work better for B2B businesses than Facebook. We get 3 times as much site traffic from twitter and it seems much easier to attract followers. We try to twit a mixture of selling messages (hey, we are in it for the marketing) and stuff which we think is informative but is around our core business, so a softer sell. I know it works for some people but am not particularly a fan of businesses that post the friendly, irrelevant, "how are you, what's the weather doing..." tweets. I think it is quite difficult to know what works - you gotta just track your stats and any direct feedback you get.
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Providing your followers with genuinely interesting posts that are relevant to them is the only way to build up a loyal follower base. It can often be better to engage with people as a person more than a brand. ASOS did this really well when they began engaging on Twitter a few years ago - every single staff member tweeted as "name @ ASOS" and just engaged with customers on anything. It gave them a really broad and rich presence and it felt quite un-promotional. It's best to get as much help as possible from your staff because engaging with people properly on Twitter takes a lot of time and effort.
Definitely follow as many people as you can early on and have a clear and coherent description/bio so people can identify you and your business easily when they see you as a new follower. Careful not to follow too many people at once or Twitter will ban you (max 100 per day). If you want to set up a load of tweets at the start of the week and have them released say at a rate of one per day automatically then I would recommend Bufferapp. For follower management SocialBro is excellent and cheap (about $7 a month).
Definitely follow as many people as you can early on and have a clear and coherent description/bio so people can identify you and your business easily when they see you as a new follower. Careful not to follow too many people at once or Twitter will ban you (max 100 per day). If you want to set up a load of tweets at the start of the week and have them released say at a rate of one per day automatically then I would recommend Bufferapp. For follower management SocialBro is excellent and cheap (about $7 a month).
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It varies very much from business to business, industry to industry. The demographic of your target audience for example is key to the types of things you should be tweeting.
The main thing initially is to make sure you have only targeted followers... people that MIGHT actually buy your products/service.
Once you have a targeted set of followers you can start a campaign of tweets and monitor how/if those tweets are engaged with. You may for example find that you followers are most likely to engage if you tweet is sent between 3pm and 4pm, and contains an image. You could build up these kinds of stat using tools like Buffer.
Initially don't worry about your tweet converting instantly into sales... worry about people actually engaging with them (retweeting, replying, or clicking links).
Before even starting your tweeting campaign try to monitor the followers of your competitors, and get those people to follow you, and of course make sure your existing customers follow you.
Hope that helps....
The main thing initially is to make sure you have only targeted followers... people that MIGHT actually buy your products/service.
Once you have a targeted set of followers you can start a campaign of tweets and monitor how/if those tweets are engaged with. You may for example find that you followers are most likely to engage if you tweet is sent between 3pm and 4pm, and contains an image. You could build up these kinds of stat using tools like Buffer.
Initially don't worry about your tweet converting instantly into sales... worry about people actually engaging with them (retweeting, replying, or clicking links).
Before even starting your tweeting campaign try to monitor the followers of your competitors, and get those people to follow you, and of course make sure your existing customers follow you.
Hope that helps....
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UKBC
A myth. The amount of hours needed to get any conversion rate with social media, would be far better used by actually picking up the phone and talking to people. Facebook,Twiiter and design agencies would all like medium and small companies to think it's a must have, but in reality it's not. The only people who make money from it are Facebook,Twitter and the design agencies.
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If a business owner is going to undertake his own social media campaign, no design agencies are going to make any money out of it. If you are suggesting that Twitter simply cannot work for small and medium business, and cannot offer a ROI even if they out-source the work..... then you are totally wrong.
Yes if the campaign is badly managed, it wont produce a ROI. A well managed, well rolled out Twitter campaign will offer a ROI, either managed in-house or out-sourced.
Yes if the campaign is badly managed, it wont produce a ROI. A well managed, well rolled out Twitter campaign will offer a ROI, either managed in-house or out-sourced.
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UKBC
So are you saying when your website offers social media management, you do it for nothing? or do you make money out of it? I wonder what the conversion rate is of twitter,facebook followers to new client sales etc ?
You are bound to make the statement you have just made as you make money from it.
You are bound to make the statement you have just made as you make money from it.
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UKBC
I dont want to burst your bubble but you have 70 followers ? I suppose if 50/60% buy your services then yes thats a good result. (This is not aimed at you) But the internet is born an industry of dreamers and they convince other businesses of a dream that don't happen very often. These dreamers have never run a successful online businesses generated from organic hits, but act like they have. I don't run a business as such any more, just a hobby to me now. However I over the years I have sold 2 online businesses, one that had over 100,000 unique hits a month, all from organic seo and more recently I sold one in just over 12 months of being online that had over 20,000 unique hits a month, again using organic seo. That's not a dream. Don't let others convince you it can be done without them having done it first.
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TotallySport
Its also full of sceptics, so what split testing have you don't in order to give credit to your opinions about Social media?
Did you try social media in your last businesses? and if so how?
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UKBC
I have tried various things on Social Media and 95% of companies that it proves successful for are companies with large advertising budgets. Most businesses who use social media and follow others are also other businesses, they all looking for the same thing but it never happens for them. If they had the money to run a big TV ad, then they would get targeted clients/sales etc from it.
People by from People and on most occasions you would be far better off talking to people over the phone, going to breakfast clubs etc, than spend endless hours posting on facebook and twitter.
People by from People and on most occasions you would be far better off talking to people over the phone, going to breakfast clubs etc, than spend endless hours posting on facebook and twitter.
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TotallySport
so you haven't, most people who don't use telemarketing would say it doesn't work, but the people in the industry would say it does.
The truth is generally somewhere in the middle, and there is no one fix for all.
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UKBC
What Iam saying is yes I have. I have had 1000's of followers on one site. However the conversion rate is always poor as its people or businesses in the industry that mostly follow you. You need to target your audience that buys from you and that can prove very expensive. There are far better more constructive ways of spending your time and it won't break the bank. The people in the industry who say it does work are all making money out of it, so the will say that.
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TotallySport
But you haven't, for you to positively argue a case you would need to split test in various industries, and have different objectives in the campaigns, but you again providing any supporting anything by what you have done, you stating "most people", " Most businesses".
All your arguements are based on companies selling things and making money directly from it, and that's not always the case, you mention TV adverts, but most TV ads are about brand and company awareness not direct sales.
Any company that wants to advertise, needs to understand what its objectives are, the best way to achieve this and how much it is going to cost, then find the best way to monitor those plans.
You also state its better to pick up the phone or go to breakfast clubs, how long and how much would it costs a company to find the 10,000 people on a mailing list? yes you could have over 10,000 followers on twitter, and how many people actually go to breakfast clubs, most of which I would say are B2B, what about all the B2C businesses breakfast clubs simply don't work.
The easiest people to sell to are previous customers, if your previous customers use social media, and are on your social media profiles it makes sense that it would work.
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I use Twitter in order to improve my communications with my clients and, why not, future clients. IT's a great way to interact, not just promote your business. That might seem a bit harder, but as long as you're tweeting on behalf of your company and you keep it real, you never know where that lead may come from.
All the best!
All the best!
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Here are a few things you can do with Twitter for your business:
1. Tweeting a company promotion, new company product, etc.
2. Staying in touch with customers, addressing their concerns, etc. sort of like a public helpdesk.
3. Finding a lot more potential customers and partners via advanced searches.
Make sure to get a lot of followers on your niche so as to be able to reach a good audience. There are plenty more things you can do with Twitter for your business and the best part is that its easy and free!
1. Tweeting a company promotion, new company product, etc.
2. Staying in touch with customers, addressing their concerns, etc. sort of like a public helpdesk.
3. Finding a lot more potential customers and partners via advanced searches.
Make sure to get a lot of followers on your niche so as to be able to reach a good audience. There are plenty more things you can do with Twitter for your business and the best part is that its easy and free!
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Twitter is one of the social media networks that provide you the facility of sending messages (tweet) upto 140 characters to your followers. You can post any content like website pages, document, pictures and videos.
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