Twitter and Marketing

Twitter has quickly become a key element in the marketing strategies of many businesses, small and large. If you want to put Twitter to good use for your business, the vital elements fall into a few basic categories. Twitter offers traditional advertising opportunities in the form of promotions, but there are many other ways to use the service for marketing that don't cost anything. By seeing Twitter as a communication, networking and branding tool, you can use it to your advantage.

Communication

Twitter is of course primarily a communication tool. For this reason you can use it to communicate with existing clients and customers as well as press. With existing clients you can provide support and capture vital feedback from your customers or users. Many companies use Twitter to promote special offers or deals. This gives followers an incentive to keep themselves acquainted with what you are tweeting about. It goes without saying that Twitter is potentially most valuable when attracting new custom, but it is also an effective channel from which to manage your existing client base.

Branding

Twitter is a microblogging platform. This puts it in an excellent position to express a consistent message representing your business brand. Key strategies here include linking to any updates about your products, including media items such as videos, newsletters, blog posts and media coverage, as well as linking to the relevant sections of your company website. If you want your tweets to be noticed by Twitter users who are not already following you, you can do so by tweeting on trending topics. You can see the list of trending topics when you log into your Twitter account. Often, the trends involve tweeting using hashtags. Twitter users often view all tweets on a particular topic or hashtag, regardless of whether those tweets are from accounts they follow.

Network

Twitter is part of the world of social networking, so it naturally provides extensive networking opportunities. Many companies take the approach of seeking out Twitter users who appear to be potential customers and following them, in the hope that they will follow back. However, it is more valuable to have a small number of followers who are genuinely interested in your product than a large number who are paying little attention to it. To attract the attention of tweeters who are more valuable to your business, you can carry out searches on Twitter. Searching for a topic that is either specific to your business or related to it, then replying to those tweets, is a way to connect to users who are interested in your product area.

Promotion

In terms of traditional marketing, Twitter offers a range of promotion options. You can purchase promoted tweets, accounts and trends. This is akin to a mainstream advertising approach, with the promoted content appearing within user timelines even if the user does not follow your account. Twitter targets these tweets at relevant users, based on their own accounts. Promoted tweets also appear within search pages, profile pages and Twitter clients. Twitter clients are applications used on mobile and desktop platforms, used as an alternative to accessing Twitter through the Web browser.

Related Links

Twitter: What are Promoted Tweets?
GigaOM: 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business
Entrepreneur.com: Five Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing That You Might Not Know About
Copyblogger: The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing
Mashable: 5 Proven Twitter Marketing Strategies