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Twitter: What is it and how can it h . . .
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Twitter: What is it and how can it help your membership site?
There are many attempts at social networking sites and services
but its rare that any ever take off. Facebook and Myspace are a few
of the wildly successful exceptions to the rule.
The newest social networking tool that is getting very popular is Twitter
(www.twitter.com). The popularity is based around its simplicity. The site
helps people answer the question: "What are you doing now?"
On first impression the first thought may be "so what?". (At
least that was my initial reaction)... But it turns out that
it can be interesting from the perspective of both reading
other people's tweets and also writing your own.
While blogs have been allowing people to answer that question
online as well, twitter is much more straight forward. It only
allows you to post entries up to 140 characters.
So instead of the pressure of having to spend a long time working
on the perfect blog post, instead think of Twitter as a "micro
blog". People are using it to instantly send out short
messages (called tweets) about what they are doing and what
they are working on.
Other People's Tweets
By clicking to "follow" a person on twitter, you are notified
each time that they update a new message (post a tweet). It can provie some interesting insight into what people of
interest are doing. If you had a favoriate author or blog
personality, you can discover projects they are working on
or their thoughts or observations of the day. They may post
a new resource or perhaps a link to an interesting article
that they wish to share with people following them. Because you are only allowed 140 characters, it challenges
people to be short, concise and interesting. If you aren't
then people are likely to lose interest. If you do have some wisdom or interesting insights to share
however, then it starts to get very interesting from a
marketing perspective...
Using Twitter as a Marketing Tool
There are ways for people to search Twitter for topics of
interest. As you post your tweets, the words you use are
searchable. People finding your postings will often start
following your tweets as you are talking about things that
are of interest to them. The interesting thing is when you start posting links back
to your site, blog or even new products that you are just
rolling out. As your list of followers grows, you can instantly
start generating a rush of traffic with one simple Twitter
update. The key to Twitter is to try to maintain the balance between
being overtly commercial vs. conversational with something
interesting to share. No one wants to be pitched to constantly
but if you have something important you are working on and
want some feedback, you can post a tweet asking for people's
opinion. You will often get responses.
Real World Examples
Some real world examples of using Twitter. Since Twitter is updated in real time as you post to it, you
can often get nearly instant feedback from people following
your Tweets. I just got back from Las Vegas for a master mind group with some
Internet marketers. I saw several different examples of Twitter
being used. Some tweets sent out while I was there included: "I'm in Vegas until Friday. Anyone interested in an informal
get together for lunch?" "looking for good mood music for today's master mind session.
Anyone have suggestions?" "I'm in Vegas with (big name person). I'll be doing a Q and A
interview. What questions do you have for him?" "Just posted a new entry on my blog about our adventures in
Las Vegas last night: [link]"
These tweets were responded back to very quickly after being
posted. It was providing real time interaction with the marketers
base of people following him. Think of it in the perspective of being like an instant email
newsletter but without the hassle and time committment of sending
one out. Instead Twitter can be sent from a web enabled cellphone
or even dictated to using a voice to text service. Because it is
so easy to update and not a huge time committment, it allows for
a lot more spontaneous connections to potential customers or
clients.
What Are The Results
I talked to several people about this while I was in Vegas. They
had anywhere from a few hundred people "following" them to thousands.
They all agreed that a properly done short post (tweet) can
nearly instant drive a lot of traffic or responses. One person
uses it to announce new updates to his blog and he stats show
hundreds of visits in a short amount of time every time he Twitters
about it. Sharp marketers know the power of repetition of exposure to
potential customers. The benefits of having customers feeling
a stronger connection or repoire also helps build a more loyal
user base. Twitter is turning out to be a tool that can help out
with both of those.
Tips Getting the Most out of Twitter
Here's a few tips to get the most our of Twitter:
It should be obvious, but the more people that know about you on
Twitter the better. You should make a point of mentioning your
Twitter address and encourage people to follow your tweets.You can include your address in your emails, in your newsletters,
on your contact page or other places in your site. My twitter address by the way is: www.twitter.com/timkerber Please visit that link and feel free to follow along.
Another tip is to keep try to keep things a bit interesting. If
you continously post mundane tweets ("what I had for dinner") or
overly commercial pitches, then people are likely to lose
interest.Think of a Tweet as a headline. You want to get people's interest
and want to keep reading each time you post.
You can include URLs. Since you only get 140 characters, use the
free URL shrinking service at www.tinyurl.com - It will convert
a link that is a hundred character down to a fraction of that
size.
There are hundreds of tools for twitter. Probably the best that
I've come across for the desktop is twhirl (www.twhirl.org). This brings together many additional functions of various twitter add-ons in one free application.
My favorite for the iPhone is Twitteriffic.
The bottom line is that an online business lives or dies based on whether
it receives traffic or not. Twitter's popularity is giving you one more
avenue for getting people interested in what you are involved with. I
recommend you sign up for a Twitter account in your name and your
companies name before it is taken. www.twitter.com
My prediction is that it will be bought out by Google in the next year.
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