How to use Twitter for Marketing – Why should you care?
Twitter for Marketing
Twitter for Marketing
What is Twitter?
The press tell you it’s all the rage.
“The world is all a twitter”, they say.
All the cool young kids (MC Hammer? Mr. Demi Moore?) are doing it, they say.
But what actually is it? And why should you care?
Apparently it’s a microblogging platform.
I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t seem very bloggy to me.
I see it as a really easy way for people to send messages to one another without any of the awkwardness of talking on the phone or the formality and structure of email.
It’s great for small talk. Great for networking. And as a business or a one-(wo)man-brand it’s great for building social proof and establishing your brand in the mind of your customers.
You send messages out into the ether and people can choose to listen to them, or not. Similarly, you get to choose whose messages you want to listen to.
Sounds a bit odd, but it makes sense. So why should I devote any of my time to it? I’ve got enough on right now thank you very much.
That’s a good question. I know your time is precious. I know you’ve got a to-do list longer than a really long piece of string.
And I don’t want to add to that list if it’s not going to make your life easier, your time more productive or your business more profitable.
The good thing is, used correctly, it should help you achieve all of the above.
How so?
Well let’s think about the journey that a stranger has to take to go from guy-on-the-street-you-wouldn’t-recognise-from-Adam to raving fanboy – the guy who buys everything you ever produce and tells all his friends how much you rock (heck, he probably has your face tattooed on his arm.)
Following our discussion the other week about permission marketing, let’s pretend your customer’s journey looks like this.
1. He notices you.
2. You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue.
3. He gains trust in you.
4. You make him an offer. He buys some stuff.
5. You grow your relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.
This is by no means the only marketing strategy you might use. In fact, many of your customers may well jump straight in at step 4. But let’s run with this for the sake of making our discussion nice and simple. Read this post for some background on this model.
So what I think you want to know, my beautiful small business owner, is..
How is Twitter going to help me do these things better?
I’ll tell you for how…
Step 1: Your customer notices you.
This first step is often the most difficult for new business owners.
You have a Really Cool Thing that You Do, but no-one seems to know about you or your Cool Thing.
How do you get our stranger to find out about you?
Well… you could find out where he hangs out and stick an advert in his face. You could run adverts in a local paper or a relevant trade magazine. You could buy a mailing list and send out letters. You could buy adverts for relevant keywords on Google Adwords, or buy advertising on a popular website.
These are all valid and relevant marketing techniques. Generally, however, they cost money. And it’s best to avoid spending too much money when you’re just starting up.
So what’s the alternative?
Well… if we can provide the content or information that our customers are already looking for then you can be sure that these people are going to tell others about it.
The best way to get the word out about Your Thing is to have other people get the word out about Your Thing.
It just so happens that Twitter is one of the quickest, easiest and most efficient ways to connect with a large number of people with similar interests or groups of people with similar problems that you can help solve.
You can connect with people, help them out with their thing and they will be more than happy to talk about you. It’s an excellent way of building social proof and getting Your Thing in front of more people’s eyes. (Yes, I know.)
So now the news of Your Thing is buzzing around the Twitterverse. Our stranger (let’s call him Adam) is no longer quite such a stranger. He’s heard all about you. And he’s paying attention. What’s the next step?
Step 2: You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue with him.
You want Adam to agree to hang out with you some more.
Twitter facilitates this process in a number of ways.
Firstly, if he likes your stuff he might choose to follow you on Twitter. This means he has agreed to see the messages you write. You, in return, might choose to follow him back, and you might choose to communicate directly with him if you wish.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Twitter makes it easy to direct interested people to relevant and targeted information on your blog or website, by sending messages with links to pre-selected content. This is free, helpful, totally non-creepy and it doesn’t look like marketing.
Even better, other people will happily share the links to all their followers if they like it. And guess what their followers are going to do if they like it?
If that doesn’t make you pee your marketing pants and squeal with joy, I’m not sure what will.
Of course, your web page is optimized to make it easy to collect Adam’s email address, isn’t it?
Good.
Adam now follows you on Twitter and is a subscriber to your email newsletter. Perhaps he’s even your Facebook friend now.
I think he’s made it clear that he won’t mind hearing from you again! ?
What’s next?
Step 3: He gains trust in you as you deliver on your promises
Adam followed you on Twitter because he wanted to hear your pearls of wisdom. Or maybe you told a dirty joke and he kind of liked it.
Either way, Adam expects you to act in a certain way and deliver a certain emotional experience to him.
Do this. Consistently.
You can use messages on Twitter to send links to interesting content on your blog, to videos on YouTube, to useful and relevant articles on other blogs. You can do this much more often and much more informally than you could via Email. Send someone an Email every day and it will piss them off. Send ten messages a day on Twitter and people will not bat an eyelid. (I don’t want to get into Twitter best practice in this post, but here’s a quick word of warning. Twitter is, above all, a sharing medium. People will respond badly if you appear only to be promoting yourself.)
If you’re useful, friendly and, above all, consistent Adam will grow to trust you.
Step 4: You make him an offer. You buy his stuff.
Twitter makes this easy, as it gives you the power to publicize your offers to a large group of interested people. It also makes it easy to bring Adam to your blog, website, or wherever you want him to go.
Step 5: You build the relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.
This is where a lot of people get the wrong idea about relationship marketing.
Relationship marketing is all about “creating authentically meaningful connections”. It’s about sharing. It’s about personal attention, trust, feelings, rainbows and fluffy bunny rabbits. It’s about campfires, acoustic guitars and singing Kumbaya. Right?
Umm… No.
Sorry.
It’s about selling stuff.
(The clue is in the marketing bit.)
You don’t buy an iPod because you played online Boggle with Steve Jobs and he knows about your niece’s swimming medals. You buy it because makes you feel cool and it does what you want it to do.
Relationship marketing is about consistently satisfying the initial promise you made to the customer.
It doesn’t involve a huge amount of small talk. It doesn’t involve getting to know every one of your customers on a personal level. You don’t need to know their children’s names, their shoe size and the intimate details of their relationship with the pool boy. You might want to, but it’s not necessary. Probably a fantastic procrastination technique though!
Relationship marketing is about focussing on customer satisfaction and retention. It’s about delivering a consistent emotional experience to your customers.
Basically… Make your stuff cool and do what Adam wants you to do.
Twitter helps this process immensely as it provides you with an excellent way to get your name and your messages in front of your customers’ eyes on a regular basis.
Convinced?
Great. In this post we focussed on why you should care about twitter. If you want to know more about the basics of Twitter, how it works and how to get the best out of it then check out this excellent article from the Remarkablogger website.
Then, once you’re up to speed, we’ll talk strategy!
I can’t wait.
See you around!
JJ Jalopy.
How to follow me on Twitter
As Dave pointed out in the comments, I’ve been banging on about making it easy for your readers to give you permission to talk to you but then totally failed to tell you how to follow me on Twitter. D’uh.
I’m @jjjalopy. You can find read updates here. Go there and hit the follow button. Then send me a message and I’ll follow you back. Otherwise I won’t notice you and I’ll just assume that you want me to join a pyramid scheme or sell me viagra or something. And that would be a shame.
Comment by Avery
31 July 2009
Thanks JJ! I didn’t really know much about twitter before. This post gave me the kick I needed to find out more.
Comment by Anthony Lemme
31 July 2009
But before I bought my iPod Steve and I were playing boggle and talking about my niece’s medals. Why else would I buy it! I was just trying to support my good buddy Stevo.
Anthony
http://www.anthonylemme.com
Anthony Lemme´s last blog ..Suffering is a Choice
Comment by David Wood
31 July 2009
You forgot to tell us how to contact you on Twitter!!
I thought you were all about making it easy for us to give you permission to hang with us!!
See – I DO pay attention!
David Wood´s last blog ..Garrison Interview Guy On Circling
Comment by JJ Jalopy
31 July 2009
@Avery – I’m glad. But I’m confused. Why are you being such a kissass? I miss your sarcasm, wit and light-hearted abuse. It makes the blog much more fun!
@Anthony – You make me laugh! A friend of mine met Steve Jobs. He says he has very big hands…
@David – Oh bugger. Yeah. Haven’t you noticed that I rarely follow my own advice. I’m @jjjalopy. I’ll update this when I get a sec… Thanks bro!
Comment by Duane Cunningham
1 August 2009
Hi JJ,
Awesome post my friend! With twitter being the rage an all, but there are some absolute timeless gem’s of advice contained within this post that relates to all things marketing, business related if you want to sell stuff
Duane
Super-ADVANCED Persuasion Techniques & Influence Training Proven to Quickly Create a Flood of Money?Constantly & Continuously Flowing into YOUR?Bank Account Like the Niagara Falls…?100% GUARANTEED!!
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Comment by John Ho
1 August 2009
Hi JJ,
Have your Michel Frotin’s take on social marketing? Need to be careful not to use too much time on these media and always need to use them teh right way to benefit from them.
Whenever I read those T
John Ho´s last blog .."Numerology Expert Says Determined to Strive for Perfection for Those Born on 31st July"
Comment by John Ho
1 August 2009
…Whenever I read those Twitter msg like “I’m watching xyz now.”, I’m chessed off as it simply waste my (reading) time. Unless the Twitter himself or herself IS a big celebrity and the readers want to be a cyber stalkers, these senseless msg is a real turn off for all (or most?) who value their time & resources.
John Ho
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
Numerology Expert Birthday Numeroscope
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
John Ho´s last blog .."Numerology Expert Says Determined to Strive for Perfection for Those Born on 31st July"
Comment by JJ Jalopy
2 August 2009
@John – No – I haven’t heard Michael’s approach to social media marketing. It makes a great deal of sense to me though. It’s very easy to get wound up in the “social” aspect of social media marketing, forgetting that what you’re actually trying to do is “marketing”. That’s why we need a plan.
Some people take Twitter’s advice to answer the question “What are you doing?” a little too seriously, I think.
I too roll my eyes when I read something like the following:
- Thinking about how nice it would be to have a bath
- Wondering whether i have time to have a bath
- Decided I didn’t have time to have a bath and I’m going to do the washing instead
- Wishing I had had a bath after all…
So, yeah, I know what you mean.
A lot of people are really entertaining on twiter, though. Like me!!
Comment by Darryl Pace
3 August 2009
JJ,
Great post on how to effectively use twitter for business purposes. I had actually given up on twitter as a useful tool until reading your post. Maybe I’ll give it a go and see what happens.
Health, Fitness — Darryl Pace
Fitness Product Review
Darryl Pace´s last blog ..Never Give In!
Comment by John Ho
5 August 2009
JJ,
Read Michel Fortin’s excellent blog post: “Social Media Isn’t Dead, But It Can Be Deadly” @ http://www.michelfortin.com/social-media-dead-deadly/
Another good source is J.P. Micek & “Debbie Coach’s” http://www.TribalSeduction.com
John Ho
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
Numerology Expert Birthday Numeroscope
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
John Ho´s last blog .."Numerology Expert Says Fidelity & Emotional Loyalty is Hard to Keep for Those Born on 5th August"
Comment by JJ Jalopy
7 August 2009
@Darryl – Get yourself on Twitter! It’d be great to chat to you!
Comment by JJ Jalopy
7 August 2009
@John – Thanks for the great links. I’ve chatted to Deb a few times on twitter. She’s cool. And a Twitterholic!