Posts tagged ‘How to Use Twitter’

November 16th, 2009

Be a Social Media Whiz: Secrets of a Successful Online Campaign

elearning desktopYes, you can be a whiz at using social media successfully.

Here’s the secret: You wouldn’t start a new billboard campaign without careful planning, would you? Of course not. Yet many companies seem to jump right in to a social media campaign without giving this type of marketing the careful consideration that other types get. Why? It is a new medium to many, and we’re still learning the ropes. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others can be very effective – if done with a little planning.

Here’s a 10 point road map to help you plan to make the most effective use of a social media campaign, taken from a recent webinar presented by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer. Already using social media? Review to see if there’s a new idea for you.

1. Competitive Assessment: What are your competitors doing in this space already? What can you borrow from them?

2. Internal Situation Analysis: How much awareness is there of social media within your company? Is there an understanding that it can be measured and create a positive ROI?

3. Major Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish with your social media campaign?

4. Consumer Thought Process: What is the typical sales cycle for your product? How much trust do you need to build before you can make a sale? (Hint: The more expensive the product, the more trust needs to be built.)

5. Key Strategies: What approach are you going to take in order to have a successful program?

6. Brand Essence: What is your brand essence and how are you going to communicate that using social media?

7. Positioning: How is your brand currently positioned in the marketplace? Where do you want it to be positioned as a result of your social media campaign?

8. Essential Message: What is the essential take-away you want consumers and prospects to have after engaging with your brand via social media?

9. Tactical Plan Overview: Which social media platforms are you going to use for your program? Which tools are you going to use to measure the success of your program?

10. Executional Roadmap: What are your SMART Goals for this plan? How are you going to be held accountable for them?

Careful planning will make the time spent well worth it, and make you look like the whiz that you are. Just don’t forget to have fun and be creative with your campaign. You may be the next trend setter, with competitors following your example!

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CategoryFacebook, LinkedIn, Marketing Techniques, Social Media, Twitter | CommentView Comments

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April 29th, 2009

The Trouble with Twitter

Yes, Twitter is a phenomenon. That’s a given. But will Twitter be more than a 21st century version of the Pet Rock? Will it gain ongoing traction with the population? And, most importantly, will Twitter ever figure out how to make money?

Twitter loses 60% of its users every month. At that rate, it will never have more than 10% of total online users, according to Nielsen Research

Twitter's retention rate after one month is just 40%. At that rate, it will never have more than 10% of total online users, according to Nielsen Research

A recent study posted by David Martin with Nielsen Online noted that Twitter’s retention rate hovers around 40%. That means that 60% of the people who sign up for a Twitter account stop using it after a month. It’s almost impossible for a company to grow reach when their audience fails to return after one month. And, according to the data provided by Mr. Martin, at Twitter’s current retention rate, it will peak at about 10% of online consumers.

Mr. Martin also studied the MySpace and Facebook retention rates in their first few years when their reach looked more like Twitter’s current reach. At that time, both MySpace and Facebook had steadily-growing retention rates of more than 40%, which moved closer to 60% as time moved on. Twitter’s retention rates have fluctuated without passing 40%.

All this begs some questions, which we’ve answered below:

  1. Is social media over-hyped? Yes, it is. If you take a look at the Gartner Hype Cycle, you’ll agree that social media is currently at the top of the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” curve.
  2. Should marketers give up on social media? No, just because social media is over-hyped doesn’t mean you should give up on it. It just means that it will end up as one of many tools in the marketer’s toolbox.
  3. Is Twitter a waste of time? Yes and no. It’s a waste of time if you’re addicted to inane comments about the weather and favorite music choices. But if you use it as a tool to 1) build awareness for your brand and 2) drive visits to your landing pages, it can generate very solid revenue. Just ask Dell Computers who has generated millions of dollars in incremental revenue from one of its Twitter accounts.

The bottom line is this — social media isn’t going away and neither is Twitter. People who say it’ll never amount to anything are just as wrong as the people who say it will solve all your marketing problems. The truth is, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media tools can be very valuable, if you use them properly.

Follow Up — For an excellent counter argument to the Neilsen research, be sure to check out the By We, I Mean You blog. Here’s a short excerpt: 

“It didn’t take long for actual users of Twitter to find serious flaws in Nielsen’s findings. Chief among them, Nielsen can only account for activity on Twitter.com. They are not accounting for the use of 3rd party apps like Seesmic and TweetDeck or the use of mobile devices. According to TweetStats, over 40% of tweets are coming from tools other than Twitter’s site. A significant percentage of “returns” are not being captured in Nielsen’s analysis.”

For the entire posting, visit Twitterers are Quitters?

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February 4th, 2009

How to Use Twitter for Your Business

Here’s the challenge — you’re a business with a Twitter account and you’re trying to figure out how to use Twitter to promote your business.

The problem is, some people who follow you on Twitter won’t take well to the idea that your company is using Twitter to push sales of your product. Some people think it’s contrary to the idea of the internet. Other people believe that it’s okay to use Twitter to drive business, but that you have to do it carefully.

Dell Computer has done a great job using Twitter to drive sales. The word on the street is that they generated an incremental $1 million in revenue last year by promoting special offers via Twitter.

But not everybody has the resources that Dell has to launch a robust Twitter program (remember, doing what Dell did requires more than just doing Tweets — it requires inventory management, marketing, IT development and other things to make it work.)

But if you’re a small- to medium-sized business, you can still make it work. A great example of this is to do what WineGlobe does. Instead of pushing out Tweets that exclusively promote sales of their product, they do Tweets that help create a community around their culture (Wine) and their brand (WineGlobe).

Interested in learning where the word “toast” comes from? Find the answer by clicking through on one of their Tweets. True or False: Red wine gets its color from the red grapes used to make it. You can find the answer to that question via their Twitter account, too.

If you’re interested in using Twitter for business, you should take a look at how the folks at the 60 Second Marketer break down the different types of Twitterers:

  1. The Self-Promoter: This is the business, typically a one-person consultant, who exclusively promotes their own eBooks, webinars, services or products. Don’t be this guy.
  2. The Newbie: This is someone who really doesn’t get the idea of Twitter. They Tweet about the weather, their dog, their girlfriend and their mood. Don’t be this guy, either.
  3. The Retailer: This is a company, like Dell, who uses certain Twitter accounts to promote discounts on their products or services. It’s okay to be this guy if you don’t mind having short-term followers who will jump ship once they’ve bought your product.
  4. The Community Builder: This is who you want to be. Offer news, tips, insights and information via Twitter. Occasionally send out information on your own products and services that would be helpful to your followers. Most of all, create a conversation that builds on itself and helps you differentiate yourself from your competition.

Twitter is still in its youth and it’ll evolve a great deal over the next few years. But right now, if you’re thinking about how to use Twitter for business, use the Community Builder approach. That’s what WineGlobe has done and it’s what you should do, too.

P.S. If you aren’t already following us on Twitter, you can do so by clicking 60 Second Twitter.

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December 29th, 2008

The Trouble with Twitter

We’re big fans of Twitter here at the 60 Second Marketer. It’s one of the great, new social media tools that help people stay connected with each other.

But there’s a problem with Twitter: It can be a big, huge waste of time.

This isn’t a criticism of Twitter. On the contrary, we believe Twitter is a valuable tool for people interested in staying connected with their customers and their customer prospects. But we also feel that Twitter can gobble up inordinate amounts of valuable time.

The bottom line is this — if you let Twitter get a hold of you, it’ll suck up a lot of energy that can and should be used elsewhere. It’s surprisingly easy to get caught up in the back-and-forth that’s part of the Twitter environment.

The challenge is figuring out how to stay engaged with Twitter without getting sucked into the meaningless (and time-consuming) Tweets that make up about 30% to 50% of all the chatter that happens on Twitter.

Any suggestions or thoughts? Anybody see paralells between Twitter and Blackberry?

Do tell.

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November 6th, 2008

The 13 Top Social Media Tools, Tips and Techniques

Recently, The 60 Second Marketer conducted a free webinar on Social Media. In the webinar, we discussed several of the new tools, tips and techniques people are using to help promote their products and/or services.

There are hundreds of different Social Media tools available, so it’s easy to get confused by all of them. One of the key concepts we discussed was how to categorize these tools so that they’re simpler and easier to use and understand.

There are three primary categories of Social Media — tools that help you network, tools that help you promote and tools that help you share content.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we consider to be the top 13 Social Media tools broken down by category:

Networking tools — These are tools that help you connect with customers and prospects:

• MySpace: Think of MySpace as a social media tool that’s a little like a music festival. There’s a lot of energy, a lot of passion and, unfortunately, a lot of noise. It’s great if you’re targeting the youth market.

• Twitter: Think of Twitter as a cocktail party. There are a lot of different conversations going on and you can move from one conversation to another conversation.

• Facebook: Facebook is like a pub. It’s a great place to meet people on a more casual basis and have relaxed, off-the-record conversations with the people you meet there.

• LinkedIn: Think of LinedIn as a trade show. It’s a little more professional than Facebook and you’ll want to meet and connect with people there in a more businesslike manner.

Promotion Tools — These are tools that help you promote content about your product or service:

• Flickr: A great place to upload photos of your most recent company parties, conventions or product launches. Not the most important tool in the world, but worth checking out.

• Podcasting: Don’t make the mistake of doing a podcast that just regurgitates your press releases. Make your podasts fun, interesting and relevant. Don’t waste your time if you’re just going to have the CEO ramble on about your latest new product launch.

• YouTube: What can we say about YouTube that you don’t already know?

• HowCast: Ahhhhh, here’s something that’s interesting. HowCast feeds “How To” videos to a growing community. Perfect if your product requires a video tutorial.

• TubeMogul: Do you have videos you want to share with the world? Then go to Tubemogul, where you can upload your video once and let them send it out to YouTube, MySpace, Vidder and a gazillion other video sharing services.

Sharing tools — These are tools that help you share content that would be helpful to your prospects or customers:

• Google: You already know about Google, but did you know about Google Alerts? Just plug in a keyword and Google will send you an email a day that lists when that keyword was discussed in a blog. Perfect if you’re interested in staying on-top of things. Also great if you’re a big brand and you want to respond to negative comments about your product or service.

• Blogs: We’re going to do an entire webinar on blogs and blogging in the coming weeks, but for now, remember this — don’t do one unless you can write something relevant at least 4 times a week.

• Article Marketer: Do you have articles that you’d like published around the web? Then check out Article Marketer. We haven’t officially used it, but at first glance, it looks like a very useful tool.

• Digg, Del.icio.us and other bookmarking tools: As you know, these tools allow you to tag articles and other content that you think might be useful for others. We’ve found that it’s best not to abuse these tools or to try to milk them. That’s just abusing the system.

Are there important tools that we’ve missed? Which tools do you use? Share your thoughts and comments on them with our readers!

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CategoryBehavioral Targeting, Blogs, Facebook, General Marketing, Google, Interactive, Marketing Techniques, MySpace, Newspapers that are Tweeting, Podcasting, Social Marketing, Twitter, Viral Video, Web 2.0, Yahoo, YouTube | CommentView Comments

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The 60 Second Marketer is a free online magazine brought to you by BKV Interactive and Direct Response. We try to provide quick updates on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing. We also try to accomplish that with a dose of humor or levity. As it turns out, we're pretty good at providing tools, tips and techniques, but we're not actually all that funny. Which would explain why people don't call us "funny" as much as they call us "laughable." Bummer. Our offices, for those of you who are interested, are located in Atlanta (404-233-0332) and Kansas City (913-648-8333). We also have offices on Bora Bora, but they don't have the phones installed yet.

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