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Twitter Marketing is just one of the many faces of social media marketing that has gained prominence in the last few years.  As a social media network, Twitter has also become a choice online marketing platform for tech-savvy B2B marketers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.

 

Just like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter has the potential to drive engagement with consumers/followers and to generate leads.   Big brands such as Dell, JetBlue and Starbucks have used this Twitter marketing strategy with considerable success.   In the section that follows, we shall look at Twitter basics, best practices, and ways to use it to drive engagement with your target audience.

 

Twitter Marketing and Lead Generation

 

Twitter Marketing

 

Twitter Basics

 

Just before we look at the best practices for using Twitter marketing, we should look at some of the basics of using Twitter. I believe this will give you a great head start as you embark on establishing your presence on Twitter. Here are some really fundamental things that you should bear in mind when using Twitter for internet marketing.

 

  • Create a Twitter Marketing Strategy for your business/company/brand
  • Develop a Twitter Policy for the Marketing process
  • Create an attractive Twitter profile
  • Identify key metrics to measure and enhance performance
  • Manage your Twitter reputation

 

Twitter Content Marketing Strategy

 

I don’t know what your thoughts are on Twitter marketing, but I think it’s much easier to plan a marketing strategy for Twitter than Facebook marketing. The reason is pretty simple; Twitter limits content to a mere 140 characters.  That notwithstanding, you should create a great profile that draws the attention and interest of prospects and reflects your brand.

 

When creating content for twitter marketing, you should focus more on others instead of yourself or your business. Let’s look at some practical ways you can use twitter marketing to your advantage.

 

  • Pose Direct Questions– you can engage followers and customers by asking questions to elicit discussion on your Twitter account or even your blog.
  • Share Quotes you can also drive social engagement by tweeting quotes that are relevant to your industry or niche. Your Twitter  followers may also find the quotes encouraging and retweet them.
  • Share Links – you should also tweet links to your blog posts, guest posts, or other important and relevant news in your industry.
  • Share Photos/Videos since you twitter does not support direct online video marketing, you should use media-rich tweets to attract customers. You can attach photos or links to photos and audio-visual materials along with your text.

 

While some business may get away with publishing internet marketing content revolving around the business or brands, it’s advisable to maintain a balance in your marketing approach. You have to determine the kind of content or ideas to share with your followers and also think about the impression.

 

Let me be honest with you. It’s somewhat difficult to get results from Twitter marketing than from any other text-rich and image rich social media and content marketing networks. Twitter limits tweets to just 140 characters. Incidentally, this gives little room for B2B Marketers to share or publish content.

 

I am not trying to discourage you with Twitter marketing, but if you have a significant following on twitter then you can still drive engagement and create value for your prospects and followers.

 

Know Your Competitors

 

As you create your Twitter marketing plans, you should not also forget to find out how your competitors use Twitter.  It’s very important to research on how your competitors are using twitter to drive engagement and to generate leads.  You don’t have to do extensive research; you can view their twitter profiles to see their tweets, re-tweets, favorites, and the kind of responses they get from their followers. All these will give you a good picture of their strengths and weakness in online content marketing so that you can create a powerful twitter strategy that drive and sustain engagement with customers and prospects.

 

Driving Engagement in Twitter

 

Having looked at some fundamental practices of Twitter marketing, we should now look at the best ways of driving engagement in Twitter.

 

  • Engage Your CEO in Social Media one of the best Twitter marketing practices is to engage your CEO to drive the engagement with prospects, customers, and followers.  Many customers would love to engage with company executives and I believe the CEO is the best suited person for this task. Since most CEOs have little time to engage actively in other social media and content marketing, they can use Twitter marketing as the last minute tool to engage with customers and followers.  Twitter will certainly give you a great opportunity to keep everyone up to date with what you’re up to in real time.

 

  • Announce Special Offers & Exciting Deals – another way of using Twitter marketing to your advantage is to announce special offers and deals to your followers and prospects.   If you have a large Twitter following then you can rest assured that your followers and customers will check that out and even re-tweet in their accounts to friends and followers.  You don’t have to worry about the location or sphere of influence of your business; I believe that this strategy works really well for location-based businesses and internet-based companies as well.

 

  • Tweets Live Updates on Events another way of generating leads and driving engagement is to tweet updates of your corporate or social events to followers who want to know what you’re up to at a particular point in time. Let’s assume that you are the Brand or PR Manager of your company then you can use Twitter to invite followers and customers to your event or keep them up to date with what’s going down.

 

Measure Your Twitter Metrics

 

If you’re are really interested in boosting your Twitter marketing then you should measure some monitor and measure some key performance indicators from time to time. Tools such as Argyle Social, HootSuite and Buffer can help you monitor, manage, and take your Twitter marketing campaign in the right direction. You should track impressions, clicks, and new followers on an on-going basis.

 

Twitter marketing is without a doubt a great way to drive engagement with followers and to generate leads. You can increase lead generation and conversions by monitoring and evaluating your Twitter marketing campaigns.  Though it can be a little bit hard to prove direct conversions from Twitter in the short-medium term, the results will definitely accrue with time.

Persuasion

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