Effective Twittering Means Knowing Your Marketing Objective

Twitter isn't just for the tech-savvy elite anymore. Everyday more and more companies are turning to social media networks like Twitter to connect with customers and expand their fan base in real time, but how do they get started?

Deciding to start a Twitter profile for your company is a big commitment. The idea of instant communication and real time posting is a great benefit for individuals, but an added workload for busy companies.

Twitter relies on the premise of new content by means of messaging. For individuals this can stop at a few daily or weekly updates, but a business looking to successfully connect with people needs to do just that, connect.

To make sure your Twitter account is working for you and not against you, the first thing you need to determine is your main marketing objective and overall goals for joining the network.

Twitter as a Customer Service Tool

Large and small companies alike have turned to Twitter as a customer service tool to quickly and directly address customer questions and comments. Whole Foods uses Twitter to give customers instant information on store locations and hours, Qwest uses it to provide technical support and billing issues.

What's important to keep in mind though is that if you decide to use your Twitter for customer service, your followers will expect instant communication. If you cannot dedicate an employee's time to vigilantly monitoring and responding to questions/comments constantly, going this route will not work in your favor.

Learn More about Your Customers

Twitter is a fabulous research tool because it has applications and tools that allow you to find out who is tweeting about your company. It also allows you to find tweets about your competition. This kind of consumer feedback can be the key to unlocking a new marketing strategy, renewing focus on a specific brand, rethinking hours, locations, or other aspects of a brick and mortar store, expanding into a new market or helping to define your niche.

Perhaps after spending some time listening to what others have to say you'll find out what you need to be communicating with your customers.

Promotion vs. Ego

You are a business and therefore you need to push your brands, products, services, and all around fabulousness to your customers, but not all the time. Companies that do nothing but pitch promotions and toot their own horn are not getting the kind of positive feedback on Twitter they thought they would.

To cultivate relationships with customers you have to think about it like a relationship with another person, they don't just want to talk about you all the time.

Twitter marketing is all about engaging on a personal level. You need to ask them questions, get their opinions, share stories about your employees (with their permission, of course), link them to websites besides your own that feature something great, and show them you are more than just a faceless company. Keeping customers engaged means more than throwing sales promotions out nonstop, it's about striking a balance between self-promotion and relationship-promotion.

Once you figure out what kind of relationship you want to have with your Twitter followers you'll have a better idea of what you need to get there.

Learn more about how Twitter can work for your business.

For more information about how WeDOwebContent can help you get your social networking savvy on, contact us today!