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5 marketing tips for tackling Twitter

Steve Mulder
Social Media Posted on September 10, 2008
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2. Publish valuable news and information

Only after you've listened a while and understand the style and etiquette of Twitter communications should you consider creating an account and posting content. An easy starting point is to publish regular news and updates that you already distribute via other channels:

  • Product announcements
  • Press release headlines
  • Events
  • Press coverage about you
  • Blog posts

In most cases, you'll post just a headline with a link to the full content. Examples of companies publishing news updates include Oracle, Salesforce and Apple, which unfortunately appears to ignore Twitter except during Steve Jobs' presentations.

But don't limit yourself to pushing existing content. After all, only truly passionate customers will follow your tweets if all you provide is news they can already get elsewhere. Your Twitter presence won't grab attention if all it does is link to other content, like Salesforce does. Think about new and different bits of content that your prospects and customers will find valuable.

For example, JetBlue often uses Twitter to post weather alerts or travel tips that make traveling easier:

Whole Foods finds external resources that it knows customers are interested in:

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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)?