eSpire Marketing

I was stumbling once again along the Warrior Forum to find an interesting thread where a person was asking is Twitter worth the effort?

Unfortunately the answer is not all that simple. First you have to ask yourself a few questions. One, who is your audience and are they on Twitter? Two, what are you trying to do with Twitter? Three, does Twitter fit into your time budget? And Lastly how will you measure Twitter Success? I’m going to be attempting to clarify each question for you throughout the rest of this article.

The first question is a question that everyone should always ask themselves before getting into any endeavors with their business or marketing plan. Who is your audience? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you had better find a new profession and quickly, this economy is not a forgiving one, and there is certainly no room for businesses that don’t know their market. Is your audience using Twitter? do a little bit of research behind this one. Use Twitter Search and search for some of your market’s main keywords, if there is a lot of conversation about your product, genre, or niche then you might be onto something. If not, don’t waste your time. There are plenty of other great places to spend your time trying to acquire customers.

If you decide that you’re going to set up a Twitter account for your business the next question to ask yourself would be, what are you trying to do with Twitter? Just like anything else you have to have a common goal in mind and a plan to reach that goal. Do you want overall brand awareness? Another place to share your blog links? Or do you want to drive direct traffic and sales through Twitter. Whichever way you decide to go there are a different marketing techniques and best practices in order to get you to that next level.

Does Twitter fit into your time budget? We all know that Twitter is a free service and that Dell claims they made $1 Million in sales on Twitter last year, but are you Dell? The answer to that question for most of us is a definite NO! It is going to take time to build your Twitter following, and in my experience from a direct sales standpoint with Twitter, it takes a longer time to actually get people to want to purchase from you. So figure out if it is worth your time to start the campaign before you do.

The last question you’ll want to ask yourself is how will you judge Twitter success? This should go hand in hand with the reasons you are joining Twitter in the first place, but if you aren’t getting those sales right off the bat, how will you measure success? How are you going to measure the amount of brand awareness Twitter is bringing you? These are generally answered through whatever analytics program you use for your site but make sure you have this in mind as well.

After you have asked yourselves all of these questions I think you’re going to be well on your way to getting started with Twitter. You’ll certainly be well ahead of about 85% of the Twitterverse anyway. The reason my company has stopped spending time on Twitter is because of the infestation of the spam community and the lack of sales directed through Twitter. It has however been a great traffic driver to specific content that we are trying to push. Now that you know the questions you should ask yourself, start answering them already will you!? I mean time is money people! Have a good one.

Look if you haven’t noticed lately, everyone seems to think they are a Twitter expert. The fact of the matter is there isn’t a single person out there who is a Twitter expert. NOT ONE! They are all selling you or feeding you information that you could find out very easily on your own. So put away your credit card, and start focusing on what really matters, and the truth is what matters.

The truth of the matter is that Twitter isn’t even an expert on Twitter. If they were an expert on Twitter, don’t you think they would’ve found a way to monetize it at this point? Every single automated direct message I’ve ever seen come from a “twitter expert” is something that I learned through my own 20 minute Google research. Trust yourself. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t even trust what I say. Seek out the knowledge for yourself. I love to teach everyone whatever I can because it’s what I’m passionate about, but even some of the big dogs that I read screw up from time to time.

I hope all of you are reading daily, not just blogs, or forums, grab this thing called a book, read it, take notes, and formulate your own ideas reflecting upon what you’ve just read. It’s weird how they say everything you need to learn you learn in Kindergarten, well here is another such example. I’ll be here in the meantime trying to get you the best knowledge to the best of my abilities, as quickly as is humanly possible. I have a great following and I can’t thank all of you enough. You make my day that much more special. Thanks for reading. Now take a tip from your high school principle and hit the books.

I am running a case study with one of the Twitter accounts that I am working on where I am finally scheduling a recurring tweet. I use the service Tweetlater to do all of my tweet scheduling. In the past I have been very hesitant about using the scheduled tweet on a recurring basis, simply because it seems extremely spammy to me. I hate spam, as I’m sure most of you do, but I figured there is no better way to tell if my followers think it is spam than to test it out and see what happens.

Here is the hypothesis that I am running under – By scheduling a recurring tweet on a sale that we are having I will increase the amount of sales during the promotion by at least 10%. I also believe that I will not lose any or gain any new followers as a result of sending these recurring tweets.

I chose 10% because that is my goal I’d like to increase each promotions effectiveness by at least 10%. I don’t believe that I’ll lose or gain any followers as a result of this because I believe that the amount of people who decide not to follow me anymore will equal the amount of new people who do decide to follow me. The case study is going to be 2 weeks long. By the end of next week I will share the results with you. Let me know what you think about this case study, if you’ve run it before great, tell me your results. If you haven’t run it before and are interested in it tell me what your thoughts are on the recurring tweets.

Quality Vs. Quantity, that is the question that everyone is asking themselves when trying to start their Twitter campaigns for their respective businesses. I have worked with both and seen results with both, but I am here to tell you why having quality Twitter followers is far better than having a large quantity of them for your business.

What is your main motivation for starting a Twitter account anyway? Is it direct sales? For some of you it might be, but I would say for the majority of you, you want the opportunity to create opportunities for viral marketing and get the chance to be more connected to your customer base. Quantity might get you more direct sales, but with so many people in your feed at all times, it’s nearly impossible to pick out which of your twitter followers is actually a fan of yours, and actually cares about your product. If you have a refined list of people who truly care about your business, you will get the chance to really connect with these people, and turn them from a one time customer, into a lifetime customer.

What else can you get from a quality twitter following? As you’re connecting with these true fans you’ll get a chance to hear some of their stories, some of them will probably even let you know why they love your business so well. It’s the word of mouth marketing that you are really looking for right? There is nothing like it. Think about it, when you want to try a new restaurant in town, who do you go to? Generally, you ask your friends right? Well that’s what these quality twitter followers will give you, they will recommend you to their friends, and even better they will do it on a large social network in front of millions of users for everyone to see. Recommendations from other people are so valuable. Don’t you want to to get as much of it as you can for your business?

Like I said before I’ve seen great success with both types of Twitter marketing. It is really up to you to decide what you want. I will tell you that in my experience the quality followers will give your business a much more intimate relationship with your customers and that will help you tremendously. Test both theories for yourself though. If you start with one and find that you want to go another direction you can always change paths by refining your list later, or trying to go out and get as many people to follow you as possible.

While everyone else is concerned with Twitter unleashing their own business model, I know that all of you are more interested in how to create your own twitter business model and how to turn those followers into customers. Monetizing Twitter is not all that difficult of a task. Some will tell you it’s a game of averages, that you should get as many people to follow you as possible regardless of whether they are actually interested in you or not, and start trying to sell things to them. There is no denying that you will see some success with that approach, but by using that approach you will lose some of the added value that your followers can bring you. People who don’t care about you, aren’t going to retweet your posts, aren’t going to say good things about what you’re doing, and aren’t going to be engaged with you on a regular basis. So my suggestion is, that you build a following of people who actually do care about you and your product. While your numbers may not be as big as the next guys, the value of each of your followers, will be much higher.

Step 1:
Build you network of caring followers. Post about things only related to your topic. Follow only people who are interested in your topic, and engage with people who are interested in your topic. The ability to create your own little niche of sorts on twitter is one of it’s greatest features. Using search.twitter.com you can find people who are talking about topics that are related to your field and engage with them.

Step 2:
Engage these followers in some way. Whether that just be general comments, contests, or by posting news updates about your product you need to engage these people and let them know that they are important to you from the start. My favorite thing to do is a contest. They work EVERY time because there is always going to be a small niche of people who are just looking for free stuff.

Step 3:
Determine your Twitter sales approach. Twitter is a great tool for a lot of things. It can be used for customer service, blogging, or sales. If you are looking to make your Twitter account drive more sales for you you have to be sales oriented. Use it to post your sales and deals but also use it to help your customers out with any problems they might be having with your site.

Step 4:
Give people incentive to follow you on Twitter. This should be done whenever you are trying to get more of your customer or user base to engage with you on social media. Give them a discount code just for following you. It’ll make them feel like they are a part of something exclusive and special.

Step 5:
Announce that you are on Twitter. Put a twitter icon on your front page and link it to your twitter page. Blog about your Twitter account. Let people know that they can find you on Twitter and let them know that just for following you you’ll give them an exclusive discount code.

The best way to sell things online is to test new and creative ideas. I challenge all of you to try and push the boundaries of normal practices and put your own spin on them. These are more of guidelines to help you get started selling on Twitter than anything else. Take my ideas and give them your own creative boost. That is when you’ll be able to really take off with Twitter and your other social media campaigns.

There are two separate business models for successful business growth online. If you are looking to drive sales through your twitter account Twitter can be great for that. If you are looking to just get your name more well known Twitter is still a great place for you to get started. This article is dedicated to teaching all of you how to get the Twitter sale conversion success that we all crave.

Everyone is on Twitter now, from Shaq, to your Congressional leaders, to big branded businesses. For those of us that aren’t quite that established in the public eye I’m here to tell you that Twitter is for you and I as well. Even with all of the big fish in the pond there is still plenty of room for the rest of us to help grow and establish a brand and a business through Twitter.

Now I better put a disclaimer in here. For those of you who are looking to maintain the conversion rates you normally see from your online sales avenues, you are not likely going to see those same types of numbers while selling through Twitter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money. Dell made over $1 Million last year on Twitter, but that is only $1 Million from their hundreds of millions of dollars in sales they did last year.

If you are looking to strictly drive sales through Twitter I suggest using the <a href=”http://twitter.com/delloutlet”>Dell Outlet</a> model for Twitter. While still staying in communication with the customers who choose to contact them via Twitter the main focus of their Twitter account is to post the latest and best deals that they have to offer on their website. Take a look at this screen shot from their Twitter page.

The tweet that are in the Yellow are the sales that Dell is currently running on their outlet site. The examples in the orange are examples of how Dell communicates with their customers via Twitter when they aren’t posting a sale. Notice how even when simply communicating with the customer their communication is still sales driven. Instead of having a normal twitter conversation you might typically see on Twitter they are straight to the point and always sales driven.

Now Dell has a superior advantage to almost everyone else who is trying to sell on Twitter, they are already a well established brand, all they have to do is tell people that they have a Twitter account and they have 450,000 followers. You can still have relatively similar success to Dell by using this model but you will also want to couple that with a bit more conversative involvement on Twitter in order to grow your Twitter follower base. Perhaps try setting up another Twitter account to build brand awareness and drive your traffic from that account to your sales based Twitter account in order to try and pin point those followers who want to buy instead of just have a conversation.

There are other sales avenues you can try through Twitter as well such as magpie and other sales avenues. I will get to those avenues in a later post perhaps. I wanted to show people the best way to drive sales directly through their company’s own Twitter accounts. Twitter is great for a lot of things and it can be used to increase your sales I suggest just giving it a try.

I recently was reading an article on TwitTip.com entitled Intangibility Of Twitter the article was about an internet marketing director that was using Twitter to try and grow the business. This person set up a Twitter account with the company’s name and then also set up a personal account that also displayed his company’s news and other information. The CEO of the company was questioning the amount of time being spent on the Twitter campaign vs. the amount of sales driven.
There was a decent amount of discussion in the comments under the article about how great of a sales tool Twitter is and ways to possibly improve sales. I would contend that there are two separate business models for success with Twitter.
If you are looking to drive sales with your Twitter account I would suggest taking the model that Dell Outlet uses. If you are looking to just grow brand awareness and general name recognition I would suggest simply getting involved in the conversation points on Twitter that your specified demographic is interested in.
I am going to be getting into the two separate Twitter Business Models for success in two separate segments because they really do need to be broken down a lot more than I could in this article. Stay tuned I should have them finished shortly. If you’re looking for immediate answers you can find me on Twitter @HarryWatson00.

For those of you who aren’t yet convinced that Twitter is the real deal, that it can help grow your online presence, and can help you network, easier than any other social networking site on the web. This is my attempt to give the extra push you need to become an avid Twitter user.

1. Instant News Feeds- Twitter has instant feeds into anything that is happening in the real world. For instance, when the United Airlines flight landed in the Hudson river a few months ago, it was a Twitter User that sent the news out into the world first. He took an eyewitness photo of the scene, and he was the source that the media was using at first.
2. Constant Entertainment- Twitter is big pretty much all over the world. For all of you insomniacs out there, twitter is your social networking haven. No matter what time day or night, Twitter constantly has thousands of users updating their twitter accounts 24/7 365.
3. Get to Know your Favorite Bloggers- Some of Twitter’s most avid users are some of the internet’s best bloggers and writers. With Twitter you get to find out what your favorite blogger is up to in between each blog post. Their updates give you a glance into the person behind the blog. Twitter makes it easier than any other social networking site.
4. Get Other People’s Opinions- So you just read a story that you can’t quite figure out? Hit up search.twitter.com or check Twitter’s top trending topics to get great candid advice from the twitterverse. A lot of times on a blog you will get a watered down opinion from someone but on Twitter, users will tell you what they really think.
5. Find New Sources for Info- With the power of retweeting through twitter, people are spreading new sources and new great information, from all over the internet. Sometimes even the big time bloggers and media miss out on some great information. Why not use Twitter to introduce you to some other great minds.
6. Get Connected to People in Your field- Again Twitter is probably the easiest social networking tool for looking to network with people in your profession. For example, I have made countless numbers of strong connections with people in my field (internet marketing) or a related field, that I have been able to work directly with in order to achieve a common goal.
7. Get Fresh Ideas- Twitter gives you access to some of the worlds most creative minds. Whether it be a new recipe for dinner, a new contest idea, or a new way to organize your life, Twitterer’s are coming up with new creative ideas on a daily basis that you have at your disposal right at your fingertips. Cool huh?
8. Stay Connected with Your Community- By following people in your local communities you can have better access to more opportunities to participate in your community than ever before. Take this scenario for instance; It’s Saturday afternoon and you’re sitting around being lazy and bored. So you get on Twitter and check out what some of your local twitter friends are tweeting about and you see that there is an Arts Festival in town that you didn’t know about with free entry for the first 500 people. You hop in your car and head to the participate in the festivities; Problem solved!
9. Get Closer to Your Friends and Family- Let’s face it, life is busy, we’d love to be able to keep in touch with our friends and family more but simply don’t have the time. With Twitter, that problem is solved as well. You can log on and see that your friend Suzy’s daughter just got accepted to Harvard, or that your brother just started putting up a new fence at his house, Twitter makes getting closer with your family and friends easier than any other social networking service.
10. Share your knowledge with the world- Most of us don’t consider ourselves experts in everything we do. But just like you look to others for cool new ideas and advice, others will look to you. Share some of your ideas and advice with the world, while you might not think it’s that big of a deal, others might.

Twitter is a great tool for many reasons. From staying connected to friends and family, to coming up with your next fun project, Twitter is a social tool that is more powerful than any other social networking tool on the internet. It is the most powerful because it has broken down the barriers of the friend request. You don’t have to ask permission to read someone’s updates, you can do that by simply choosing to follow someone you find interesting. Check it out. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Until next time….

Everyone loves to win free stuff right? Well I think that’s pretty undeniable. Well Wendy Limauge a.k.a TheComputerLady has brought the twitterverse a great new service. Twitter’s Tweeting is a website created by Wendy that exclusively deals with contests that happen through Twitter. I asked Wendy if I could ask her a few questions about her site and her twitter experiences. She was so kind and accepted my invitation for an interview. This is what The Computer Lady had to say.

Why Did you decide to start your Twitter Tweeting contest site?

I started this site because I found that Twitter contests were becoming popular and I wanted a site to post all of the contests I found.

What value do you gain from twitter tweeting? (relationships, networking, etc)

I have met a lot of people on Twitter I would not have otherwise met and I continue to meet new people because of Twitter. I also have found great ideas from people on Twitter for promoting my sites.

I have also learned that if I need help with something that I can’t go to Google or another search engine for the answer that I will put out a request on Twitter and someone will have an answer that will usually solve my problem.

What advice would you give to a person who is interested in becoming a twitter user?

Don’t send too many Tweets out at first. Just site back and watch how it is done. Learn how to shorten your links with Tinyurl.com. Do a search at http://search.twitter.com and put words in for hobbies you like, your business, and other keywords that will help you find people to follow that have common interests.

What is your favorite part of using twitter and having your twitter contest site?

I like using Twitter because I know someone will be online that I can chat with at any time during the day or night. It is night to know there are real people out there on the other side of my computer. It makes the Internet more personal.

END INTERVIEW

If you would like to submit a twitter contest you may do so by clicking on that link. Wendy also runs a regular sweepstakes website known as Sweeties Sweepstakes and also Sweeties Swag where you can also find non-twitter specific contests and sweepstakes. And she also regularly updates her twitter account with all of the contests she has running on her websites. Thanks Wendy!

Till Next time….

The use of twitpics is generally designed to be used for fun purposes. To really emphasize what it is that you are doing at that moment in time and to share a little bit better who you are as a person and what your are involved in during your day to day life. I’ve used twitpics before and have had a great deal of fun using them. They break up content a little bit more along a person’s feed. So, as a marketer how can we use twitpics to our advantage, and what sorts of benefits might we gain from using them in our updates? Well that is what I want to take a look at right now and discuss a little further in depth.
Power Twitter is a cool tool to use for anyone who is a Firefox user and also a twitter user. What it does is it adds a search bar to your main twitter page and also uploads twitpics and video links directly on the person twitter feed. This is a great tool that I believe should be utilized by people who are advertising and attempting to sell through twitter.
Say you have an email blast that you are sending out. To this point you are only able to send this creative work inside the email campaign to the specific set of people on your email list. Now with twitpic you can take this technology to upload this photo and give everyone in your follower base the image that everyone else gets to see along with your promo.
This will do more than just add a pretty picture to your ads:

• It will bring attention more towards your tweet on a page. We all know how important it is to be able to attract the eyes of more people with your ad. That is 80% of the battle in marketing. Take advantage of this.
• Increase Click Through- These two things generally go hand in hand. The more eyes on your ad the higher the click through rate.
• Increase conversions – This isn’t rocket science everyone knows that all three of these things together work together to increase sales and increase conversions and revenue

Thus far it is not possible to take a Twitpic and make it directly clickable to a specific link. But you may add your advertisement information on that page and even a link to the original ads landing page. It is a basic principle but one that I have not seen this in use yet, and I think people are missing out on a great tool to use to their advantage.

Till next time…