Many years ago, there were articles all over the internet about the importance of using Facebook and Twitter for your business. Nowadays everyone has seen how successful businesses leverage their social media campaigns to create viral marketing which in turn drives sales
Facebook and Twitter offer different ways of reaching people and different audiences. Although Twitter is getting more and more visual, integrating images and video more and more, it is still largely pushed as a short-form text social media in which we must be brief and get straight to the point.
Using Twitter
What’s Your Goal?Nowadays there are several social media websites that capture different audiences and are suitable for different parts of the purchasing funnel.
The first thing is to determine what you want from Twitter. For example, a law firm would not try to secure new clients with Twitter. Rather, the law firm would be establishing itself as a credible source of information with great tweets about their expertise. Becoming a leading voice in law will add to their credibility and impress potential clients. It’s important to figure out if your target market are using Twitter and then see what real value you can bring to them.
When using Twitter for your marketing, it is important to know what your customers are interested in as well as you. So if you are managing the social media activities for a sports shop, you can expect your customers to have an interest in playing sports, watching sports and possibly health and fitness too. It is a good idea to do some customer research through questionnaires to find this out.
You also need to create a suitable branding and voice if you want to gain from using Twitter. Think about who you are talking to, how formal you need to be, what sort of language they use and what they see as being trustworthy. When you have decided on this, you can use Twitter more effectively. These are some of the ways in which Twitter can be used in your marketing plans:
PR / Content Marketing: It is worth finding out who are the influencers in your network. Who has an interest in what you do and also has a following of their own? This could be individual Twitter users or blogs and publications. Either way, you can follow them and get involved with their discussions (if it works well with your brand voice) and share any relevant content with them. This way, when you Tweet and videos, blogs, photos or other content you have created, they are more likely to pick up on it and share with their followers.
Customer Service: Twitter is fantastic for customer service issues because all conversations except Direct messages (DM ) are public so it gives the business a means of showing the general public how well it treats its customers. Use it to reply to customer issues promptly and retweet and thank customers for positive tweets
Discussion Building: To generate discussion you really need to know what your customers are interested in, what they care about and what makes them feel important. We get involved in discussions because we want to look like experts at subjects that others in our community care about, so open discussions around the things that relate (even loosely) to what you do and impact your followers. So, if you are running social media for a health food company, then ask your customers how they keep fit, how they avoid injury when exercising, whether they agree with a famous new diet.
Twitter and Facebook differ in terms of interaction, as Twitter is more of a quick browsing tool, for users to quickly glance at to get a view of the world, but Facebook is more in depth and can eat up a lot more time, so create your content to suit.