Twitter has exploded in 2009 and yet most people are still asking “What’s it for?” 

Everybody is talking about the huge potential of Twitter but for newcomers it’s a pretty confusing and daunting prospect. To help we’ve created an outline strategy for promoting your brand on Twitter.

Creating the account

The most important thing you can do when creating your Twitter account is to make sure you use the right email address.  The Twitter signup process allows new users to import email contacts from Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook.

Using your company's main contact email address (the one where you send order confirmations or newsletters from) will automatically mean all your customers will be able to follow you when they register an account.  If your company has 10,000 past customers email addresses and 5% of them sign up to Twitter you get 500 followers without even trying. 

Register your actual company name as the account, don’t worry if it’s taken by somebody else because Twitter will normally reassign it to the rightful owner.

Adding your customer database

Twitter allows you to import your contacts from common webmail services such as Hotmail at www.twitter.com/invitations. If your contacts are on Twitter you can follow them and because you there is a good chance they will follow you back.

You need to export your customer database as a CSV file (best broken down into smaller chunks if you have lots of customers).  Next import the contacts into a webmail program such as Hotmail, once this is done you can import the contacts into Twitter and start building your followers.

Building your followers

The key principle behind Twitter is that some users will follow anybody who is kind enough to follow them while others just follow a handful of people.  If you want to gain 5,000 followers then the easiest way is to just follow 5,000 people who are likely to follow you back.

Search for advocates of your industry, company and brands, follow them and they will likely follow you back.

If you want to get really targeted try searching for keywords related to your brand and following people who talk about your sector.

It’s all about content

As with Search Engine Optimisation, if you create good content and link to great content people will follow you.  As well as linking to content Twitter allows you to retweet which is the equivalent of forwarding an email to your friends'.  This is a great viral way to grow your followers as your twitter address is passed on to others along with your comments.

Twitpic enables you to post pictures.  Here’s a great example of an advertisement following Barack Obama's inauguration. It was posted on Twitpic and generated huge interest.  Can you see why?

Goodbye Bush

Monitoring your reputation

Twitter reputation monitoring is quite easy thanks to a service called www.TweetBeep.com

Think of this as a kind of Google Alerts for Twitter – enter some keywords and URLs related to your company and TweetBeep will send you an email whenever somebody talks about you.

15 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools >>

Monitor hot topics

It’s a good idea to monitor hot topics to see if any relate to you.  Using hashtags (#) Twitter will group together posts on the same topic e.g. #iphone.  If for example, there’s a large group tweeting about how hard it is to find a job and you are a recruitment agent you might create a post on ‘top 10 tips to getting a job’.   Don’t make the mistake a large UK retailer made of ‘jumping into the most popular items’ that bare no relevance:  the largest group at the time was #iranelection.  They submitted posts promoting their homewares to this group which caused a massive backlash!

What you should say

Working out what to actually say is the hardest part of using Twitter.  The first thing we recommend is to use www.TwitterFeed.com  to automatically broadcast any blog posts you publish to Twitter – great if you have a blog or news site with an RSS feed.

Other options include Tweeting new articles on your site or special offers - try offering amazing product discounts and it could well snowball.  If your first tweets don’t work keep following the conversation and trying new things.

Useful Twitter Links

10 Twitter Tips
The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter

Useful Twitter Software

www.bitly.com – shorten, share and track links
www.tweetdeck.com – manage twitter feeds and other social media, including Facebook, from one place

For more information on social media, call or email us: 09 889 8020 or results@steer.co.nz

Social Media Resources

Top 10 Social Media Tactics >>
15 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools >>
Top 10 Links for Social Media Optimisation >>
Key Social Media Questions >>
The Value of Social Media for Online Retailers >>
How to approach Social Media >>