by Travis Scott | June 22nd, 2009
Let’s face it- social media is here to stay. The mechanisms may change (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), but the concept is not going away anytime soon.
If you’re a small business owner and you think that it doesn’t apply to your industry or your company, think again.
Granted, not every social media channel is going to be a fit for your business, but I can guarantee that a few channels will be.
When I began to write this blog post, I was going to cover several different social media channels in a single post. When I started writing about Twitter, I realized that there was too much to cover, so I am going to split it out into separate posts over multiple days.
First up….Twitter. On deck….LinkedIn (Part II)
Twitter
Benefits – Branding, customer engagement, promotions, information sharing, reputation management
The Skinny – Twitter has become an extremely powerful information sharing/news-reporting tool (e.g., Tehran protests). This same medium can also be very powerful for your business from a branding and customer engagement perspective.
Branding: With regard to branding, you add your logo to your profile picture and begin to engage with people to generate a network of “followers.” Let’s say you “tweet” 3-5 times per day; that’s 3-5 times per day that your logo is in front of people. That doesn’t even take into consideration the engagement with current and potential customers that you have on a daily basis.
Customer Engagement: For example, you can perform a keyword search of the conversations happening on Twitter of, say, widgets. You sell widgets. Maybe someone is asking for advice on what brand of widget they should buy. Bingo! Now you have a potential customer with a need for your product or service. Simply introduce your product and direct them to your website for more information.
Follow up with them the next day to ask about their experience. That’s it. You may have just landed a new, happy customer while your competition has no idea what’s going on because they’re not using Twitter.
Promotions: You can use Twitter to inform your customers of a sale that is going on or insert a coupon code in the tweet that only your Twitter followers can use.
Some companies use Twitter for promotional giveaways. For example, my friends at BaconSalt will occasionally offer a free sample of one of their products to anyone that is the first to correctly reply with the correct answer to a trivia question they post about bacon or pigs.
In the tweet below, Southwest Airlines is using Twitter to promote a complimentary service that their customers may not know about or have forgotten about. In this example, they are including a tweet one of their customers posted.
Information Sharing & Customer Service: Whole Foods does a great job of using Twitter for customer service and information sharing.
In the example below, a customer has publicly asked Whole Foods a question about pomegranate availability in June:
Whole Foods replied with the following response:
Twitter user balapitchandi may have been disappointed that he will be unable to find fresh pomegranates in June, he is probably happy with the responsiveness and personal attention he was given fro Whole Foods. With this post, they have now shared information about a product’s availability that other Whole Foods customers may not have known about. I know I didn’t know that pomegranates would be hard to find in the month of June.
Reputation Management: With Twitter’s search function, it’s very easy to find out and keep track of what is being said about your brand and company on Twitter. You may find people raving about your brand, in which you should publicly thank them. This not only shows your gratitude, but let’s your customers know that you are “listening.”
On the other hand, some of your customers may be experiencing frustrations with your product or service. You can quickly engage with them and find out what is wrong and try to fix it. Sometimes, just showing that you are listening and care is enough to turn a disgruntled customer into a passionate customer.
As you can see, Twitter can be a powerful and inexpensive marketing tool when used properly, and there is no reason that your business should not have a presence on this social media platform. There are just too many opportunities at your fingertips to ignore it.
If you would like to find out how RainierDigital LLC can help your small business integrate social media into your existing marketing strategy please contact us at (206) 388-2580 or via email at info@RainierDigital.com.
Travis Scott Twitter social media, social media marketing, Twitter
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