What Is Twitter
Twitter lets you message millions of people at one time by using up to 140 character text messages, images (and coming soon videos).  

You can have an endless amount of people following you and you can follow as many people as you want. 

There are no limitations on the total amount of followers you can have or how many you can follow.
Why Use Twitter As A Marketing Tool
Twitter enables you to reach a lot of people nationwide and internationally in a very short period of time.

The object is to get as many people who are interested in the subjects that you tweet about to follow you. 

The more people you can get to follow you on your twitter account the more likely that those people will visit your website to learn more about what you have to offer.

Sign Up For A Twitter Account

Signing up for Twitter costs nothing.  The account is Free.  Go to www.twitter.com

Under the “New to Twitter” area enter your Full Name, Email address and Password.  Then click the signup button.  Once you’ve signed up, create your profile.

  See video on how to sign up for Twitter.

  See video on how to use Twitter.

 

How To Use Twitter For Marketing Your Business

When it comes to using twitter as a marketing tool for your business you have two choices.  You can chose to perform this function “in-house” by yourself or a member of your staff or you can “outsource” it to a different organization that specialize in this function.

In-House:

To perform this function in-house follow these steps:

1.  Sign-up for a twitter account and create your profile.

2.  Start tweeting by sending messages about your topic.  You can include link to news articles and information on that topic that are listed elsewhere (for example, your website).

3.  Start following:  When you follow someone they are notified that you are following them and may take an interest in following you.  People that are interested in following you on Twitter will be interested in coming to your website.  Commence following by identifying the people or organizations to follow by doing the following:

-  Type in the subject area in the Twitter search bar and find organizations and individuals that show up in the search results and start following them.

4.   Monitor conversations about your company.  Use twitter search engines that let you do this.

 

Note:  Read the Twitter terms and know the rules for following: 

Twitter Terms
Twitter Rules for Following

 

Oursourcing:
To outsource this function consider the following:

PROS:

1. You don’t have to learn new technology

2. You can spend time on taking care of more important tasks

 

CON:

1. The outsource company may not have the inside knowledge to accurately convey the company’s message

2. the outsourcing company could end up working for a competitor

Outsourcing Service Providers

There are companies that will perform this function for you for a fee.  The fee depends on the level of service you want.  They will charge you based on the number of followers you want to have.  You can outsource this function to the following companies.

 

ViralSO

They will find and deliver a specific number of followers for you every month from Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.  Price starts at $299.00  per month.

 

Tweet Power

provides twitter marketing services for $65 per month;  setup your account and find followers.  Help you develop twitter contests and get paid from advertising.

 

You can also hire someone from services such as iFreelance, eLancer, etc.

Twitter Tools

Use Twitter marketing tools to enhance the marketing effect:

Hash Tags:  Find topics categorized with hashtags.  From there you can also find followers simply by clicking on their username.  Simply enter the hashtag.

We Follow:  This is a twitter directory that you can use to get more followers.  Add yourself for free.

 

Automated Tweeting Tools:

LaterBro:  A fully automated tool that allows you to schedule tweets by the days or weeks in advance.  Very easy to use.  Works with Twitter and Facebook.

Tweet Deck: These tools allow you to schedule updates, post your social media messages across several social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn at the same time and organize your Twitter accounts and activity.

Hoot Suite:  These tools allow you to schedule updates, post your social media messages across several social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn at the same time and organize your Twitter accounts and activity.

Social Oomph: A fully automated tool that allows you to schedule tweets by the days or weeks.  You can also use it to respond to tweets and for un-following.  It is also a URL shortening tool.  Use it to manage multiple accounts.

Ping FM:  Use it to update all of your social networks at the same time.

Twitter Bar:  This is for Firefox users.  Allows you to post tweets from the address bar of the web browser.

Assessment Tools:

Tweet Stats:  A free online analytical tool.  Use it to assess your tweeting activities.  View tweets per hour, reply statistics ad more.  View data simply by entering your Twitter ID.

Twitter Counter:  This is another statistics tool that let you generate information about your tweeting.  View tweeting statistics in graphical format.

Twitter Grader A great tool that helps you to assess you twitter profile by comparing it against millions of others.  It is simple to use.  Simply enter your twitter account username.  

URL Shorteners Tools:

URL shorteners are great tools to use in order to reduce your text length and meet the 140 character maximum limit for twitter.

Bit.ly:  A free URL shortener service. Use it to shrink URL’s so that they don’t take up too much of your 140-character tweet limit.

Tinyurl:  takes a long URL and shrink it down to a shorter version.

goo.gl:  shortens a long URL.

Twitter Marketing Strategy

If you want to put in place a good marketing strategy these are some of the key things you should do.

1.  Start now:  It takes time to build a good audience.

2.  Stay focus on your subject:  Develop a reputation for being the go-to-person for your subject area.  Don’t sound too corporate.  Keep your tweets appropriate, but don’t scare off small talk.

3.  Tweet at the right time:  Remember that most tweets take place on Thursday and Friday.

4.  Tweet often:  Tweet at least 2-3 times per week.  Tweeting 1-3 times per day is ideal.

5.  Be a good follower:  Don’t follow others who are not following you.

6.  Know what others are saying about you:  Monitor conversations about your company.  Use the Twitter search engine to find them.

7.  Connect with your audience:  Represent your company as a person not as a brand.  Use an image of yourself or someone in the organization rather than with your logo.  People connect better on a personal level.

8.  Create a good bio:  People make a decision on whether or not to follow you based on what you have in your bio.  Keep it short but sweet.

9.  Use a single account:  More accounts means more work.

10. Use linking to your advantage:  Direct Link to your web site.  When posting URL to your web site post direct links to the appropriate page or promotional page.

11. Create buzz:  Make announcements when you have something to offer.  Announce breaking news, sales and deals.  Do it in an enticing way.

12. Build Consensus.

13. Retweets (RT):   Use retweets to your advantage.  Retweet messages that supports your goals.

How To Chat On Twitter

These are some tips on how to Chat on Twitter:

1.  Use the @ symbol before someone's Twitter username.  This is how people have "conversations" in Twitter.  This links their username to their profile so that other people can follow the conversation.  For example, "@trustme thanks for the cool link".

2.  Using @mention (also called @reply):  An @mention, is a public message that you can send to anyone, whether or not you are following them or they are following you. Mentions are public and you can include as many mentions as you’d like in a tweet. A direct message is completely private, and can only be sent to those that follow you.

3.  Hashtag:  A hashtag (the # symbol)  followed by a term and included in  tweets, is a way of categorizing all the posts on a topic.

4. RT or Retweet is to repost a valuable message from somebody else on twitter and give them credit.  When you retweet you put the “RT” before the tweet.  For example, “RT @Kitty best place to see a car rally in California is Monterey”

5.  Use friendly, casual tone.  Once it’s tweeted you can’t pull it back.  It is there for the whole world to see.

6.  Don’t spam people.  They will get turned off and stop following you.  Even worse, they will they will let others know about your bad behavior.

Paid Advertising

Another way to market your product or service on twitter is to use paid advertising to get your message out.  You can do so by paying celebrities or non-celebrities with large following to tweet advertising.

 

You could end up paying from $2.00 to $35.00 per clicks received or pay a flat fee, that could range in thousands to tens of thousands.

 

Paid advertising, also known as sponsored tweets use platforms that work by giving advertisers the ability to create campaigns and select, invite and approve twitterers of their choosing to participate in their sponsored campaigns.

 

When an advertisement is mentioned in a tweet the post will have one of the following hash-tags and notations in the message in order to comply with new Federal Trade Commission guidelines governing advertisements or endorsements by bloggers, experts and celebrities:

-       “(ad)"

-       #ad

-       #spon

-       #ad

-       #advert

-       #sponsor

-       "brought to you by"

 

 

Generate Revenues:

You can also generate revenues for your business by allowing others to advertise on your twitter site.  You can use the sponsored platforms to set your pay rate and find opportunities to tweet on behalf of advertisers.  You set your pay rate (based on either a flat fee per tweet and/or number of click).

 

List your twitter site with these companies (listed below) and start generating revenues from paid advertising:

Get Paid To Learn How To Use Twitter For Your Small Business
Twitter is teaming up with Chase Bank to offer $1,000,000 in advertising credits to small businesses in the U.S.  Credits will be awarded in $100 increments for Twitter's small business advertising platform which became available in April 2013.  Follow @ChaseSmallBiz and @TwitterSmallBiz on twitter for future updates on the program.

 

Social Media Advertising Services

   

Buy ad space on social networks based on the subject area.  Choose the service based on the audience size.  Price varies based on the twitter's audience size

   
   

They find tweeters with your target audience and get them to engage their audience with your message.  You pay when someone clicks on your link.  The average cost per click is $1.15.

   
   

Promote your ad on twitter, tumblr, blogs and YouTube. Reaches over 1 billion.  Your ad can be text or video.  You pay only for clicks and views.

   
   

Social Spark connects advertisers with blog publishers to create sponsored blog posts.

   
   

Sponsor Tweets lets you sponsor a tweeter to get your message out their followers.  Through this service you can reach some of the most high profile tweeters such as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, etc.  Their followers are in the millions.  The cost range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars per tweet.

   
   

 

Twittad lets you engage in sponsor advertising on twitter.  Lets you do targeted tweet ads at $0.05 per tweet.