In Focus

5 marketing tips for tackling Twitter

Steve Mulder
Social Media Posted on September 10, 2008

1. Listen and learn

As with other social media, the most important first step is to listen to the conversations. See what people are saying about you on Twitter. The daily thoughts of so many people can be an incredibly rich source of information on the perceptions of your brand, products and services.

The easiest way to start listening is to visit search.twitter.com and enter your brand and related keywords. You'll quickly find gems like these:

  • It's an Epson Perfection V500. It's the loveliest flatbed with negative scanning capabilities I have ever met. does 120 too. :D
  • Something's wrong with the Hertz website. First I can choose from a dozen car classes, after I change the date only convertibles are shown.
  • When did the malls in fort worth get so trashy? It felt like I was walking around kmart.
  • I will officially miss the $5 burgers at Bennigan's. If Applebees closes, too, my cheap bar eating days will be shot.

To view the volume of conversation about your brand on Twitter, also try Twist. There are also several social media analytics services that track Twitter as part of their package, such as Techrigy SM2 and Collective Intellect.

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Comments

Steve Dodd
Steve Dodd October 14, 2008 at 11:03 AM

Steve, this is a terrific outline about how to work with Twitter! More and more of our customers (Sysomos) are asking for Twitter analytics, especially when combined with other forms of Social Media. I will be using this outline as part of our customer discussions.
Specifically, there are many great examples of B-B marketing in this domain and it is growing quickly.
Thanks.

Rebecca Blackwell
Rebecca Blackwell October 5, 2008 at 12:25 PM

I appreciate the way you've broken this down, and want to point out that the same factors apply to marketing in small businesses.

Twitter has, in many ways, evened the playing field for both large and small businesses. Large businesses can act small (connecting with customers, projecting a personality, reacting quickly, etc.) and small businesses can act large (reaching large numbers of people quickly, driving customer opinion, generating buzz, etc.).

rickey gold
rickey gold September 25, 2008 at 1:23 PM

Thanks, Steve, for a great article that I plan to share with my clients who don't quite "get" twitter yet. I know they need to be there (b-b as well as b-c) especially after speaking to someone at an event last night who told me how much the word on her company's biz has spread since they've been twittering.

Fred Jorgensen
Fred Jorgensen September 11, 2008 at 1:15 PM

Well organized post and great synthesis of Twitter's role in a marketing context.

Re: Melinda's B2B question, consider following @crosbymarketing to see how we're using it to dimensionalize our agency and add value to customers, prospects and employees.

Steve Mulder
Steve Mulder September 10, 2008 at 1:58 PM

Melinda is right that most Twitter experimentation is on the B-to-C side. I'm not aware of B-to-B Twitter successes yet, though I encourage people to share any they've seen. But like all elements of social media (blogs, wikis, ratings/reviews, etc.), B-to-B usage eventually follows B-to-C successes. After all, every business user is also a consumer in other areas of their life. They all experience firsthand the value of blogs, user reviews, Twitter, and so on, and start looking for them and expecting them in their B-to-B interactions as well.

Melinda Snow Welsh
Melinda Snow Welsh September 10, 2008 at 9:05 AM

Thank you for such a great article for newbies to Twitter. This was really helpful and I'm going to start some experimenting. Quesion for you...most of the examples you cited are for B-to-C. Are you seeing success in Twitter for B-to-B (non-technical companies)?