After reading Lee’s post earlier this week on how to source content on Twitter, I started to think about the homemade guacamole I made for the football playoff games last weekend. Stick with me here.
With my guacamole, I carefully strategize on the right mix of each ingredient to achieve the perfect flavor and consistency.
Not enough lemon and lime juice, and the avocados brown too quickly.
Too much garlic salt, and the guacamole gets a pungent taste.
Twitter as a marketing tool is much the same way.
Too much product pushing and self-inflation, and your followers head for the hills in droves.
Too little interaction and communication, and your followers forget you exist altogether.
A successful Twitter marketing strategy must include a balance of different but complementary elements. Ensure the right mix with these 5 ingredients for the perfect Twitter Marketing recipe:
1. Relevant, informative content
You don’t always have to go out in search of new, interesting content to promote on Twitter. Your company likely already has produced a host of existing content that can be leveraged.
Twitter is the ideal medium for sharing and promoting:
- Tips leveraged from a blog post
- Information on upcoming events
- Research from a recent whitepaper
- Webinars with industry thought leaders
- Interesting statistics from press releases
For example, TopRank implemented a Twitter marketing strategy to help promote blog content for a client that provides syndicated content to media outlets. Each day, TopRank crafts 3-4 tweets highlighting the most interesting and intriguing elements of new blog posts, with links to the posts. In just three months, the client has increased its followers by nearly 64% to more than 1,500. The tweets were responsible for more than 1,000 visits to the blog during the same timeframe.
2. Relevant, informative content … that’s not yours
In addition to sharing your own content from blogs, whitepapers, press releases and the like, leverage content from outside sources as well.
The good news: Staying up-to-date on the latest news from across an entire industry doesn’t necessarily have to consume a lot of extra time:
- Subscribe to industry publications’ e-newsletters to receive the latest content in your inbox
- Sign up for the RSS feeds of several prominent industry blogs to get notified of fresh content
- Set up daily Google Alerts for a few relevant terms to receive the latest news articles and blog posts
It’s as simple as highlighting the most interesting part of the article or blog post – i.e., a surprising statistic, a quick tip – and offering a link to the original source.
3. Product offers and promotions
Twitter can be an effective marketing channel for sending promotional messages – when combined with other types of content.
Offer timely sales information and coupons, since the nature of Twitter allows followers to respond to promotions quickly. Provide exclusive offers to build a sense of ownership among followers, and give Twitter users an incentive to follow your brand.
Dell, for example, uses Twitter to post product coupons and new product information on a daily basis. Complementing these promotional tweets, Dell also uses Twitter to provide immediate service and elicit customer feedback. So far, the company attributes $3 million in revenue to Twitter efforts.
4. Customer service
Using Twitter to provide customer service and support empowers brands to address issues quickly, supplement formal call centers, and improve brand image. Offering customer support via Twitter involves two elements:
- Monitoring and responding: Use a service like TweetBeep to be notified by email of any brand mention – positive or negative. Then respond accordingly, but quickly and transparently.
- Eliciting feedback: Ask questions like: What features were missing from our latest software release? What subject would you like to learn more about in our next webinar? Don’t forget to acknowledge responses.
5. Retweets
Don’t underestimate the usefulness of the retweet, posting the same tweet of others that you think will be useful to your own following. Retweeting can help you:
- Increase your following
- Get your own content retweeted
Then again, don’t overestimate retweets either. If all the content you are providing can be found elsewhere, what’s the use of following?
Take some time this month to reassess how you and your company use Twitter. Is there too much of one ingredient and not enough of another? Where does Twitter use fit within your overall social media marketing strategy? Tweak the way you use Twitter until you’ve got the perfect recipe for brand engagement, interaction and awareness.
What ingredients do you include in your Twitter marketing strategy?
Be sure to connect with TopRank on Twitter!
