Continuing on Marketing through 140 Characters, in this post, we will discuss about the three broad and distinctive areas where twitter marketing can be used. These are:

1. Sharing information

2. Gather market intelligence and insights; and

3. Build relationships with people who care about the brand

Sharing Information

Twitters simplistic approach to sharing thoughts and news with other people on the Internet has caught on to the point where every respectable company has an official account and government agencies are using it to connect with constituents.

Tremendous growth has taken place in the creative ways businesses and organizations are leveraging Twitter in order to share company information. Brand patrons want information, and they want it now. Twitter is about the “now” and has earned its name as a leader in breaking news and bringing users closer to the newsmakers, which is what every brand attempts to be on Twitter.

If your brand has important information to share, Twitter should be the first place for you to share it on. This not only helps spread the news but also builds the brands image. And you can delight your consumers by sharing information about projects still being planned.

This is a typical buzz marketing technique that can make waves when the project is finally launched. But most importantly, sharing information is the best way of building Customer Relationship. An aggrieved consumer can easily be pacified if s/he can talk to the brand directly and have her/his problem addressed, thus, preventing a major PR disaster.

Market Research

Twitter has some useful features which make it especially helpful for conducting market research on almost any topic under the sun. This is because Twitter pages are viewable to anyone, even those without accounts, and the site has a search function which pulls in all recent posts dealing with a given topic or phrase. There have been instances, where events have been rescheduled, have undergone format changes and even cancelled based on feedbacks received via twitter. And to good effect as well. Similarly, researching for new products and response to new product launches has led to significant changes to improve the product or provide better services.

Here is a simple flow chart on how to do a market research on Twitter:

1 Log into your account.

2 Look over the "trending topics". Trending topics are those which have recently seen a big increase in posts. This can be a useful list to get an idea of what is currently getting a lot of buzz.

3 Use the "search" field to enter words or phrases to discover who is talking about them, and what they are saying. For instance, you might want to find out what people think of a newly released film. Just search for the name of the film and there will likely be several new posts of reactions of people that just got back from the movie.

4 Take note of how far apart the Twitter posts are for any topic. A good indicator of the relative popularity of a certain word, phrase, or topic is how often people post about them. If the first page of search results comes up with posts made over the past day or two, chances are the topic is not that popular. If the first page is filled up with posts from the past minute, it is a red hot topic.

You don’t even have to join Twitter to use the search function. If you just want to view trending topics and conduct searches, you can use the twitter search page. (http://search.twitter.com/)

Building Relationship

Relationship Marketing is a very important aspect of brand marketing and twitter can help a brand to successfully engage in it. According to Evert Gummesson, Relationship marketing is marketing based on interaction within networks of relationships.

According to individual researches, Twitter seems to be the ideal medium to build trust, win new customers as well as retain existing ones, thus helping in Relationship Marketing. It also showed that people who have been interacted with on Twitter are more likely to be a first time purchaser, a loyal consumer and a brand champion.

(source: http://www.socialglitz.com/twitter-as-a-tool-for-relationship-marketing/)

Most of the participants of the research agree on the fact that Twitter is an excellent tool to build trust which not only helps in building new relationships but also to strengthen existing ones.

(source: http://www.socialglitz.com/twitter-as-a-tool-for-relationship-marketing/)

The Conclusion

Word on Twitter spreads fast. Conversations happen in real time on Twitter, therefore giving it the sense of immediacy and intimacy. It is this one on one conversation and intimacy of Twitter which is of great value to any brand and a very convenient yet powerful marketing tool.

Twitter is a relationship building and relationship maintenance tool; the most obvious business use of Twitter is to meet potential customers and leads the same way you would at networking event or tradeshow.

However, you can also use it to:

1) Develop and promote your brand

2) Interact with your customer base

3) Track what people are saying about your company and brand

4) Create buzz around upcoming events

5) Help individual employees act as liaisons to the public

6) Promote other content you’ve created, including webinars, blog posts or podcasts

7) Develop direct relationships with bloggers and journalists for potential PR placement

With Google now showing social media updates in its results, a good Twitter Handle can only go a long way in helping your brand achieve a better search engine optimization.

Getting your Twitter handle correct.

With Twitter fast becoming a major search engine option and prime source of news, it is very important to use the medium correctly. One major aspect of being on the micro blogging site is to get the handle, or the twitter name, that is most beneficial for you and your business. Here are some basic Dos and Don’ts that you should keep in mind while creating your Twitter handle.

Creating a Twitter Handle

Dos

One name

Try to choose a name that is available on most of the social media platforms. With growing number of fans and followers, it will be hard for them to remember if your handle is abc on Twitter and ab_c on Facebook. Of course, that makes it even harder to find a handle that is available, but if you do, your followers will instantly recognize you across the web.

Real Name

Your full name or a variation of it will make it easier for people remember your handle. It also helps in promoting brand recall. Every time you tweet, you promote brand awareness for your brand and helps in making the handle more authentic.

Short is sweet

With only 140 characters to use, every letter is valuable. It’s not generally an issue but when people want to reply to you or retweet your posts, a short the handle is way better than an elaborate name. This will also earn you some brownie points with people who hate editing tweets before retweeting.

Avoid numbers and underscore

Underscores and numbers give the impression that your first choice was taken, or it gives the appearance that you aren’t putting enough thought into your username to think of something unique. This is not the impression your brand would want to give to the consumer. The uniqueness of your brand name and the brand equity associated with it should not be diluted with numbers.

Don’ts

Something completely random

This is not just confusing for the consumer but also a lost opportunity to increase brand recall. Do remember that while promoting your brand, the more you talk about it, the more it will register in the consumers’ mind. This rule is applicable any medium, be it ATL, BTL or Social Media.

A handle that has an underscore

Using an underscore is not incorrect or wrong, but it is generally not done. Use it at the risk of coming across as unaware of the “social norms,” or as a brand trying too hard to play the social media game.

A handle that is a slogan

While it may be a great way of promoting a campaign or a particular product, avoid using a handle that is a slogan for simple reason that slogans keep changing. The idea is to build bigger brand recall rather than momentary campaign involvement.

Once you are done creating your twitter handle, the world of 140 characters can open up like never before for you and your brand. Amazingly crafted tweets can make your brand a PR success like none before. Also, it can help you create a database of real time testimonials. So get going. Let your brand tweet its way to higher brand equity.

Also read about the Do’s and Don’ts on Facebook.

With Twitter almost ready to launch its analytics service by the end of the year, the market is already abuzz about the impact it will have on the Social Media Marketing scene.

The social networking giant recently announced that it has roped in a select group of users to carry out the testing of the product. It is believed that as of now, Twitter will be keeping this product, free of cost for its 197 million users.

With Social Media Marketing gaining a substantial space in the overall marketing mix, such a tool, which can give insights to a brand’s online efforts will be of great benefit. Not only will it help in deriving the results of a campaign, it will also, and more importantly, help in realigning the SMM campaign.

Tracking the Campaign

Since its launch, Twitter has seen almost every brand using it for promotion activity. Simple #tag contests and customer support have become major online activities. Brands like Starbucks, Dell Computers and Ford motors have thousands of followers on line. Closer home, brands like MTV, NDTV and Kingfisher have successfully engaged thousands of people in the most entertaining manner.

But till now, all the brands were either clueless about where there campaign or SMM efforts were heading or they were paying huge sum of money for getting insights through third party vendors. With the launch of Twitter Analytics, that too, free of cost that is all set to change.

Now, the brands will know exactly which of their tweets has helped them get more followers. Which tweet has caused disgruntle and what topics gets the maximum retweets. Not only that, with analytics available, online reputation management also becomes easier.

At a glance

With the new tool, Brands will have data such as 6-hour bar graph to show mentions, follows, unfollows and retweets that the campaign has generated. Also, it allows you to categories and filter tweets into different groups such as “best,” “good” and ‘all.”

The Impact

It is surprising that something that can help Brands so much should be offered at no cost. The rationale behind this seems to be that businesses are more likely to stick with Twitter if detailed statistics are made available to every user, helping them measure and improve upon the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and justify the effort needed to continually update a Twitter feed.

Also, though tracking social media is big business, the news that Twitter is set to enter the ring with a free product of its own may come as a bad news for third party providers.

It would be worth noting that while brands may not be able to make an exact impact on the sales figure through the tool, it will surely help them in becoming more in sync with their audience.

Having been in business development for a specialist social media agency for a fair amount of time, there are certain caveats we keep reminding clients of. This is probably because social media is unlike any other marketing medium including the sir-please-try-our-website-since-the-model-is-very-different, which is at the end of the day, just a different form of display advertising.

So six caveats I’d like to give clients, agencies and social media enthusiasts or planners are…

1. What’s so great about you anyway?

While a statement like that is suicide as far as an agency is concerned, reflect on what it means. What IS so great about your brand that would make people want to put off watching pirated IPL videos on YouTube, stop chatting on GTalk with an old friend, stop scouring social networking sites for random profiles to make ‘franship’ with… And come talk about your brand? Now that I’ve put this question in perspective, it doesn’t seem as offensive, does it?

Let me put it this way: Look around you and search for a brand you have no professional affiliation to. Why would you become a fan voluntarily of that brand? Your answer to this will help you answer what your own brand should be doing on social media.

2. Great, you’ve got your fans. Now what?

In the craze to have a ‘presence’ on Facebook, companies often resort to buying fans, using FB ads. That in itself is not an evil thing, but what a brand needs to be clear on is what to do with these fans. We’ve seen many fan pages which the marketing team of companies opened frenetically, paid a sufficient amount to get 500 fans, post a few current-campaign-related updates, and then, once the campaign and budgets are over, lies inactive. What happens of the fans? Think of it this way: fans have, on their own volition, chosen to become fans of a brand. Which is as good as a footfall. And just like a footfall, you can never ignore a fan of a fan page.

3. Not everything’s for everyone

Telling a brand manager that a blog is not right for his brand is like finally telling your girlfriend that you’re not the right person for her. OK, almost. But you know what I mean. The ease with which social media platforms can be activated leads many to believe that their brand should be everywhere. Wrong. A presence on Twitter, a blog or even a FB fan page is a long-term effort. If your brand is in it for the ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’ equivalent on social media, a quick application and some FB ads is what you should be looking at.

4. Time lagega, boss!

It is unrealistic to expect something like 1000 followers, fans or subscribers to get to your page in one or two months. Social media growth should be organic and growth will be exponential in nature. Which means, the first few months may have very few people coming in. But after that it’s like compounding. Think of it this way. A personal blog starts off with five loyal readers coerced to reading it (the industry equivalent being co-workers and your agency!) before merit alone decides whether more people start coming in on their own. It’s pretty much the same thing for your fan page, corporate blog or Twitter page.

5. Can you pass the cricket score test?

I’ve mentioned this before. But it needs to emphasised again. People are online to surf porn, plant virtual strawberries, chat with friends, check the latest gossip, read their friends’ blogs and most importantly in India, check cricket scores. The Cricket Score Test is what I call the process of someone actually deviating from this schedule, distracted by something else. Why do I say this? Because this is the same guy you’re trying to convince to play your application. Or read your corporate blog on your latest AGM. Or follow your Twitter handle of 3 updates. You get my drift, I hope. Remember, buying out fans is the only shortcut you can take. Then what?

6. Never attempt policing

It’s a free, democratic medium. It’s open. People can say anything they want, there is no point trying to suppress them, you’re only going to get lots of backlash. Anyone who followed the Nestle episode will know what I’m talking about. For a quick guide on what NOT to do on a Facebook page, click here.
And so there you have it. A few keep-in-minds for social media. All points are fairly debatable (That was the intention, honestly) and I look forward to your feedback on the comments.

Oh, and I blog here.

This is a re-post from Microreviews.

The huge success of the first post in the series ‘Social Media Presence of Indian Telecom Majors-Facebook presence’ has excited us infinitely. So, as promised we are coming out with the second post in the series.

Twitter as explained in Plain English was meant to just tell “What are you doing?”. But the marketeres saw the Gold in it. It got used a publishing service and took the marketing world by a storm.

So, Today the microreviews team set out to find how the Indian Telecom Majors are utilizing this service. Microreviews team has already reported in one of its posts how the Indian IT major Infosys Technology closed a deal on Twitter.