December 22nd, 2009
by Lorrie Thomas
One of the MANY reasons I love social media is that I am able to connect with other web smarties. This week, I received a Linkedin request from Brett Lane of Intrapromote, a social media company in Ohio. His Linkedin request was totally genuine…he saw that we had common professional paths and ideas. I accepted his request, sent him a personal message then asked him if he would be willing to share some of his expertise with our readers.
And in true social media sharing form, he did! Brett – thank you for your helpful post! It is great to have you as a virtual ally in cyberspace. WMT blog readers – enjoy this great post! It is a wealth of social media information!
Using Twitter to Enhance Your Company or Personal Brand Online
When most business professionals think of Twitter, they normally don’t envision a business marketing tool and will sometimes refer to it a passing fad. When I think of Twitter, I see a vast micro blogging community that was created to make connecting with consumers extremely easy. To see its true power, simply go to http://search.twitter.com, and conduct a query related to a popular business like Best Buy, and very quickly, you will notice how brands are connecting with consumers online. Some businesses use Twitter as a means of answering their customers questions directly or indirectly, oftentimes pointing them in the right direction by recommending helpful resources. On the other hand, some businesses use Twitter to promote coupon codes for new and used products; Dell is a great example of a product related brand interacting with Twitter users in this fashion. Then, there are the businesses that watch Twitter like a hawk scouring for mentions of their brand, products or services utilizing third party monitoring tools like TweetDeck or TweetScan to give them real-time updates related to their queries.
In order to get the most out of Twitter from a business perspective, one must first define (i.) what they want to achieve by interacting with Twitter users as well as (ii.) who they need to go after. After these two questions are answered, it becomes easier to find out what direction you must take when utilizing Twitter’s true networking power. There are many strategies that one can create to boost their online business objectives via Twitter, and to provide some assistance to a few scenarios, I have defined some interesting tools that will help out with various objectives.
Here are some tools broken down by different categories:
Finding Twitter Users- http://www.twellow.com/ – The who’s who of Twitter based directories.
http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/ – Find local Twitter users from Twellow.com.
http://www.twitterlocal.net/ – Set up local Twitter search queries with this simnple Adobe Air application.
http://wefollow.com/ - General Twitter based directory.
http://exectweets.com/ – Find top business executives who Tweet.
http://www.twitterator.org/ – This tool will allow you to follow a large list of people on a Web page or Twitter URL as well as by simply copying a list of users you have collected while conducting research. Automated tools in some cases are looked down upon; however, I am a firm believer that tools like this can be used to save time and not be used for spamming purposes; it depends on the user regarding whether its used for good or spam.
URL Shortner- http://bit.ly - Offers URL redirection services with real-time link tracking.
Auto Post to Twitter- http://twitterfeed.com/ - Send your blog posts directly to your Twitter acount via an RSS feed.
http://www.socialoomph.com/ – Schedule Tweets and find a ton of enhanced features for power users.
Twitter Stats- http://www.twitalyzer.com/ – A free tool that helps evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on dozens of useful measures of success in social media.
http://www.tweetreach.com/ – See how far your Tweets travel online via brand and hashtag searches.
http://tweetstats.com/ – Graph your Tweet stats professionally.
eCommerce- http://cheaptweet.com – Create Twitter based coupons for businesses; all you need to do is add a #cheaptweet hashtag to a Tweet you are postng in Twitter’s system.
http://www.coupontweet.com/ – Another coupon creating site to use in Twitter’s system; go to the bottom of the page and click “+ Add Coupon” to get started.
Advertising – http://www.twittad.com – A Social Media Affinity Network that connects Advertisers
and Twitter users.
http://sponsoredtweets.com/ – A new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with Tweeters.
The tools presented above should help you get started building and enhancing your brand within Twitter’s huge micro-blogging universe. As stated earlier, if you have a plan regarding defining your objectives as well as who you need to target, then you will be one step closer to gaining a stronger brand awareness in the Twitter-verse. Just remember to look at Twitter like one big social mixer where your primary goal is to get to know people first by providing them with interesting information when you post, and then after you have built credibility within your inner circle, you can start selling yourself passively. This strategy is paramount when marketing to your Twitter friends since they don’t want to be “sold to” but actually want to engage other community members to share high quality content via Twitter’s system. That said, Twitter can be used to generate customers, traffic to your site, as well as latent online sales for the products and services you sell as long as your Twitter strategy is on-point. The tools mentioned within this post can help you get one step closer to making your objectives achieveable!
About the Author:
Brett Lane specializes in creating advanced marketing strategies and has been actively involved in the Internet marketing industry since 2000. His knowledge of Social Media Marketing, SEO, and Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing has enabled him to aid small, medium, and large sized businesses with achieving their online success. By utilizing best practices & industry guidelines, Web site analytics, and conversion data, he has developed customized Internet marketing strategies to exceed his customers’ overall marketing objectives. Additionally, Brett’s commitment to client satisfaction and industry Internet marketing standards has allowed him to achieve significant relationships with his customers including outstanding improvements in Web 2.0 brand awareness, viral link building campaigns, latent off- and online sales, as well as keyword rankings results across Google, Yahoo, and MSN (bing).
Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:
- What’s in a Brand? 4 Essential Elements for Building a Powerful Personal Brand to Enhance Your Online Reputation
- How to Use Flickr and Photo Sharing to Boost Your Brand and Search Engine Visibility
- Furthering My Twitter Obsession via Twitter Lists!
- Twitter Trailblazers: The “Kogi Effect” and Other Social Media Success Stories
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(December 22nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm)
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Sarah Caminker
(December 22nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm)
Hi Brett,
Thank you for the Twitter insight! This is great for both newbies and experienced tweeples looking to expand their reach.
~Sarah
uberVU - social comments
(December 22nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm)
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by SarahCaminker: Using Twitter to Enhance Your Company or Personal Brand Online http://bit.ly/8Bz97e...
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(December 22nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm)
[...] Go here to read the rest: Web Marketing Therapy » Blog Archive » Using Twitter to Enhance … [...]
Brett Lane
(December 22nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm)
Sarah,
It was my pleasure. I am glad you found the information to be useful. I am a bit of a bookmarking junkie when it comes to Social Media related sites. I look forward to providing more insights into Social Media Marketing!
Brett
Lorrie Thomas
(December 22nd, 2009 at 5:19 pm)
thanks again Brett! You really do practice what you preach…I love that we met via Linkedin! We hope to have you share content on our blog in the future!
Frank Podlaha
(December 22nd, 2009 at 6:28 pm)
Lorrie, please allow me to mention yet another Twitter tool: It’s http://LocalChirps.com
LocalChirps allows any person (no Twitter account required) to see the tweet conversation for a specific location, world wide. Marketers and media people can really get a grasp of what’s going on in their community.
LocalChirps also has a big brother, http://Pro.LocalChirps.com This is a more indepth data mining tool of Twitter used for brand tracking, reputation management, and so on.
Please pardon this self-promoting post, but I hope it’s helpful to your readers.
Frank
Lorrie Thomas
(December 22nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm)
Hi Frank!
Thanks for the mention! Self-promotion is NOT self-promotion when you are SHARING SOMETHING HELPFUL! (that is a whole other blog post!)
This is a great tool to know about, we’ll have to check it out.
Readers: http://www.LocalChirps.com has a free and Professional version. The pro version is a subscription web application that makes it easy to filter out the noise and watch over any Twitter conversation about your company, your organization, political issues, and so on. The application is a customized closed system configured specifically for each client. Clients choose precisely which cites and geographical locations they would like to monitor. The application can only be accessed by users managed by the client. Unlike other Twitter public website tools, LocalChirps Pro analyzes tweets further back in time, discards spammers and nonsense chatter, and applies Fuzzy Logic algorithms to fully grasp a conversation as it flows on Twitter.
* Track the current trending topics in your city
* Monitor your own set of keywords and conversations
* Get e-mail alerts whenever your brand, company, politics, or cause is mentioned
* Share and colaborate with team members about your reputation
* Compare issues among multiple metro areas
* Pinpoint tweet origins on Google Maps with geotags
Frank Podlaha
(December 22nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm)
Thank you, Lorrie. You’re very gracious. See you guys on Twitter: @CarpData and @LocalChirps
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