How to use Twitter as a marketing strategy.
Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator
The spotlight on Twitter.com has only become brighter in this past year. Viral in nature, Twitter allows for real-time group conversations and encourages link sharing. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter is the fastest growing US online social networking site with a 343% in year-over-year audience growth.
Marketers are now capitalizing on the popularity of Twitter as a new online marketing strategy, a social marketing tactic, to promote their companies by driving traffic, brand awareness and healthy online discussion about the products and services.
Marketing Sherpa offers tips to integrate Twitter in a company’s online marketing mix. First, a company must identify its target audience on Twitter. Members can be targeted based on location and on behavior and interests though community “hashtags” or groups.
When making “tweets” or updating content, keep the volume and timing appropriate. The content of your tweets will depend on the target audience’s interests and on the goals of the organization. Technology allows for easy conversion of existing RSS feeds to tweets. Another option is to create customized accounts and/or fictional characters to represent a company.
In order to grow the audience base, it is important to interact with the members you follow, encouraging communication and interaction by replying to posts or “re-tweeting” updates to your own followers.
Finally and most importantly to any marketer, track metrics to determine the success of the Twitter marketing campaign. Twitter allows members to monitor page views generated and track clickthroughs. Additionally members are able to track how its audience accesses Twitter updates either though mobile devices or directly online.
While Twitter has further evolved the presence of the web, make sure that a company has the time and resources to invest in “twittering” should it decide to incorporate Twitter into its online marketing strategy.
Tags: Online Marketing, online marketing strategy, social marketing, social marketing tactic, Twitter
