For those who know me personally, you may be surprised it has taken me even this long to post something about Twitter. Well, today is the day. Many marketing success stories are popping up especially in regards to consumer brands. Great examples, indeed, but I have long suspected usefulness of Twitter for all types of marketers - some proof from the Groundswell team at Forrester.
I believe that Twitter is a useful tool for any marketer in any industry; however, the way you use it may be different depending upon your communication objectives with prospects and customers as well as your own career needs.
Learn
I personally started out just listening to the Twitter elite and marketing gurus to see what they posted about marketing topics that I was interested in. It was a great way for me to check in, get a pulse for trends, and drill down further when I had time to research. I would certainly encourage any marketer to leverage Twitter in this way.
Tip: You don’t have to be “on Twitter” all day long – it can quickly become a timesink. Set up times in your day or week to tune in and review tweets.
Listen and Engage
Then, I discovered TweetDeck and become a much more efficient Tweeter by organizing my followers in groups and searching on keywords, etc. Now, I am able to really connect with Eloqua customers and partners – it has been incredible to watch the our active and growing community here. The ability to reach out and answer questions or direct people to resources in the moment has proved helpful to internal employees, customers, and partners alike. Are your customers, partners, and employees talking about your brand or asking questions you can answer on Twitter?
Tip: Maybe you just want to listen. LinkedIn has a great integration called Company Buzz where you can monitor tweets on certain brand names if TweetDeck and other tools appear daunting.
Embrace
Now, I feel that I am hitting the next frontier of Twitter – sharing and exchanging ideas. Now that I have a voice via this blog, I want to get the messages and ideas out to our community and beyond. I also want to hear more directly about what is working for people and what is not so that I can share this back with my clients.
So I am exploring a new set of chirping tools to maximize the dialogues I can have with my network on Twitter. First, I discovered auto DM functionality with TweetLater. I was intrigued enough that I set one up to welcome new followers:
Thank you for the follow! Hope my tweets inspire your own marketing efforts.
My assumptions were as follows: (1) I advocate the best practice of a welcome, why wouldn’t I practice here? (2) I can go days and sometimes weeks when I travel without logging in to Twitterland…if I welcome them weeks later, will they even remember me? I did read some “best practices” to not self-promote and tried to make it about the follower and not me. Some Twitter purists, disagree, however. Some advice from a 10-year old – The Top 4 Common Twitter mistakes:
Seriously, get rid of those auto responders. Auto responders are impersonal.
But, do they really have to be? Is it possible to have a warm, value-add auto welcome to a new Twitter follower? Or, are they simply a No-No in Twitterquette? I am certainly still learning how best to leverage this medium and welcome thoughts on if Auto DM Replies can work. I am now considering revising mine to:
Thank you for the follow! What marketing topics are you most interested in?
Please comment or vote on our poll or send me an @jenhorton on Twitter with your thoughts!
Posted in: Campaign Automation, Multi-Channel Communications
Wish I was organised enough to regularly organise my inbox, the number of emails that are left to respond later that I never get around to.
The availability of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an ordinary reality. But to express declaratively in short messages with 140-character max involves good writing skill.