Part 8: Twitter: How to use Twitter for marketing –

In our previous post we gave you some great suggestions on how to engage with your network. So now is the time to turn up your tweeting to leverage your social media marketing. Twitter can be a tremendously valuable marketing tool! In this section, we’ll explain some specific use-cases of Twitter for marketing.

How you can use Twitter for marketing your small business –

1.)    Use Twitter to drive people to your business website – Tweet about the blog you’ve just written and posted on your website. Your entire valuable content, from ebooks to webinars should be made available to your followers. Tweet about it linking back to the landing page to download it from your website. If the content on your site is truly remarkable, people may start tweeting about it on their own and sharing your resources to their followers on Twitter. See how this can take off and grow?

2.)    Monitor your brand on Twitter – Using the Twitter Search tool (http://twitter.com/#!/search-home), you can search and track what people are tweeting about – from your company, products, competitors, or any other news or trends in your industry. Set up an RSS feed to receive all search results in Google Reader. If you find someone tweeting about your products or a person who is looking for a solution that your product provides, let them know!

3.)    Use the Twitter “Favorites” feature as a list of company testimonials – When you hover your mouse over an individual tweet in your Twitter stream, a few options appear, including the option to “Favorite” the tweet. (as per the image below).

When you click the ‘star’ it turns yellow, and that tweet gets added to your “Favorites” tab. As you track what people are saying about your company in Twitter Search, add the positive tweet to your Favorites. Public, third party testimonials are valuable validations of your company. The next time someone asks about your company, send them the link to your Favorites page. The URL for this page will be http://www.twitter.com/USERNAME/favorites

or http://www.twitter.com/weareWhiteSpace/favorites

4.)    Use Twitter to promote events, webinars and other campaigns – Tweetups are a great way to get to know your Twitter community offline. The next time your company holds an event, fundraiser, or open house, tweet about it! A best practice is to send people directly to an event sign-up page.

Think of a hastag for your event or webinar before you start tweeting about it. Remember the previous reference I made as an example: 2011 Star Trek conference could use #TREKY2011.

Selecting a #tag for your own event will be beneficial in a couple of ways:
• During the event, people often use the hashtag while live-tweeting, i.e. tweeting what they see/hear in real-time. The hashtag will tag and aggregate the event’s tweets, building an online conversation around the event.

• You have an opportunity to connect to those that are not at the event, but want to follow or join the conversation, too. A popular hashtag often sparks curiosity, and people will go to http://search.twitter.com to participate in the conversation around an event.

5.)    Establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry – By tweeting about useful resources, valuable content and thoughtful tips, you and your company will eventually develop thought leadership, and people will consider you an expert in that particular niche or subject. Be sure to link to your own resources as well as others.

6.)    Use third-party Twitter platforms to divide the work – It seems like Twitter and tweeting is a lot of work, but there are third-party platforms available to help you manage your business account much easier. http://cotweet.com/ and http://hootsuite.com/ platforms allow teams to better manage multiple contributors tweeting through one account.

Stay tuned. Our next post: Use Twitter for lead generation