I was an early adopter of Facebook. Facebook came out in 2004, and I was a freshman in college. All of my friends started to get them, and I followed suit. I loved being able to keep in touch with friends with high school and those new friends I was making while in college.
This wasn’t the case with Twitter. I actually was kind of averse to the idea of Twitter for awhile; I sometimes referred to it as a glorified Facebook status. That is, until I had to make a Twitter account for one of my graduate classes. I realized that I was so wrong.
I forgot about the account for a short while. Then, one day when I was away for most of the day when a gaming convention was going on, I decided to start following their Twitter feed. And I have been hooked ever since. I follow friends, gaming companies, and whatever else you can imagine.
Did you know that Twitter can be a great, simple addition to your marketing strategy? The key is using effectively. Which, of course, asks the question: How can someone use Twitter effectively for their marketing?
- Find a sweet spot. What do I mean by a sweet spot? Well, usually people use their Twitter accounts too often, or they don’t use them often enough. If you’re spamming your followers with Tweets, they’re likely to stop following you. If you’re not posting enough, you’ll stop getting followed or you’ll just be forgotten about. Find that sweet spot in terms of a number of posts.
- Is your tweet unique and useful? Don’t just tweet “have a great day.” That’s not exactly interesting. Give your followers a friendly tip, a funny quip, or an inspiring story. Whatever you write, make it so your readers are excited when they see that you posted. Also, don’t only give out company information. Make your feed interesting.
- Always reply to your replies! If someone replies to your Tweet, at least acknowledge them! But don’t allow your replies to overwhelm your feed. Just like finding a sweet spot with your initial posts, you have to find a sweet spot with your replying as well. Reply too much, and your message will get lost in the shuffle.
- Learn how to be brief. You’ve got 140 characters to get out the message that you want to express. Don’t ever use more than one Tweet to express one thought. People will often miss one of the two posts in their Twitter feed when you do that.
Twitter’s a great tool if you use it correctly. Don’t let technology freak you out; if you’re nervous and you’ve got a tech-savvy employee, see if they’ll be willing to put your message across instead. If you want to try it out yourself, follow some Twitter feeds that are being used for marketing and see how they do it. Don’t feel pressured to jump in head first; test out the Twitter waters first, and then, when you’re ready, Tweet away!
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