8 Ways to Take Your Company Further with Twitter
If you’re running a business, chances are you came across the term “social media” or heard of Twitter as the new “thing” you absolutely need to have – just like your competitor. But did you know that – if used right – Twitter can be a powerful tool to help you raise sales, poach customers and collect strategically important information? The following 40 companies are great examples of corporate twittering done right. If you’re wondering right now whether these best practice cases can be applied to your business too – the answer is a definite yes. Certainly every company is unique and you’ll be able to implement some strategies better than others but here is a list of 8 tips to enhance your business using Twitter, for you to chose from:
1. Create a coupon campain
The most famous example of a company using Twitter heavily for coupon campaigns is Dell. They were among the first to discover the social network as a separate sales channel and Twitter had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already in 2008. That’s why Dell started offering exclusive discounts to their followers on Twitter over the @DellOutlet account. That way they not only managed to get more followers and traffic to their site but the immediate result was a direct boost in sales. And what could work better to spread the word about a coupon campaign than the fastest communicating social network?
TwtQpon is an online tool that can help you set up your campaign:
2. Go viral using giveaways
Viral marketing is probably one of the terms that’s used the most while talking about Twitter as a marketing tool. The reason is self-evident: The tightly knit network, with its millions of users that communicate in real time using short 140 character messages is perfect for spreading the word about anything. Especially sensational news or giveaways – in short, things that could wake the interest of about anyone. The network’s technology as well as the one of professional Twitter clients facilitates sharing news by using the retweet mechanism in conjunction with #hashtags. Attaching giveaways to your viral campaign will make sure that your message is going to spread like a wildfire (especially if you hit Twitter trends). Even if you’re hesitant to spend money on let’s say 5 Macbooks – the example of Moonfruit shows how such an investment can have a huge impact (even for a 10-year-old website building service). You’ll probably get back the costs quickly and the boost in traffic / sales / attention will last for a long time, if you do it right. Here are a few tips:
- Collect followers/email addresses: Do not simply use Twitter to “announce” a giveaway or drive traffic to your site. Use the network to collect followers or newsletter subscriptions. The emails or followers you’ll get this way represent an incredibly precious list of potential customers you’ll be able to contact at will – whenever you have a new event coming up. And make sure to keep up the interest of your subscribers (that’s one thing Moonfruit failed to do).
- Have a great prize: The hype won’t be big if you give away $ 10 iTunes gift certificates. The bigger the prize the more retweets you’ll get.
- Communicate with people: Respond to feedback and questions and make sure to smash negative rumors about your campaign being spam.
3. Respond to complaints directly
Did you know that a customer develops a much closer relation to a company or a brand if they actually happened to have a problem and the issue was resolved through customer service? You should use the network to search for complaints in real time. Some issues can be responded to really easily and showing initiative this way will go a long way in raising customer satisfaction. The easiest way to track negative feedback is to set up a column with a keyword search inside Hootsuite:
When you open Hootsuite you’ll automatically see all tweets collected in a column containing those keywords. You can then reply to them directly using @reply.
4. Conduct surveys and collect customer feedback for free
Yes, customer feedback on Twitter is entirely free of charge. A social network where people talk openly just about anything in real time 24/7. Using Twitter search you can track tweets whenever your company’s name is used (see above) and see how people react to new products, changes in structure and new campaigns.
Twtpoll can help you conduct surveys and polls on Twitter:
Twtpoll Demo from Felipe Coimbra on Vimeo.
5. Spy on competitors
With Hootsuite you can set up columns for the following things:
- Collect tweets from your major competitors and see what they’re up to. If they launch a giant viral campaign (e.g. with discounts) you can make sure to react accordingly and beat their offer in your next/current campaign.
- Collect tweets with search terms involving variations of your competitors’ names as well as negative words like “sucks” or “hate”. That way you’ll be able to @reply to or DM dissatisfied customers and poach them directly, proposing your own offer as alternative.
6. Find employees
Many people react with strong skepticism when they hear about Twitter as recruitment tool. But in fact recruiters as well as big companies are using the network since a long time already to scout for talents. The most important thing is to use Twitter in this way thinking LONG TERM. Slowly build up connections within your industry, organize those contacts and get to know them better (spotting potential), when the time has come post about job offers and maybe even shoot a DM to particularly interesting candidates. Twitter is used heavily by people in just about any industry and the profile of a person can give you great insights about the kind of information she or he most frequently shares with their followers, how the person communicates and how the potential candidate makes use of 140 characters to pass on the most important facts in a succinct manner.
7. Raise capital
Ok, at this point you’ll probably think “this sounds far fetched”. But it isn’t as unrealistic as you think. Apart from the fact that Twitter offers you a great opportunity to network and get to know potential investors, the social network is often used to raise funds and collect donations for good causes. For example Mashable partnered with Twestival to promote the world’s largest Twitter fundraising drive and together they managed to raise over $250k for charity (water). They managed to secure themselves powerful partnerships and supporters on the way:
Tipjoy – Fundraising Partner @tipjoy
Amiando – Event Registration Partner @felixhaas
Live Earth – Video Broadcast Partner @liveearth
Noonan Media – Live Streaming Partner @briannoonan
Mashable – Media Partner @mashable
8. Raise Brand Awareness
There are many ways in which Twitter can help your company to raise awareness for your brand. A seamless integration of your corporate identity into your Twitter profile is just a start.
Using the network actively (campaigns, events, announcements) and searching to converse with your followers / potential customers are things that will cost resources and time but they’ll help to establish a real community around your brand and make your company feel more “human”. This is also to be seen as a long term investment that will alter the image of your company, make customers feel closer to you and give you a precious source of feedback – if done right. Keep in mind that Twitter is a highly exposed channel where every message and and tweet counts as it can spread in no time; so, be careful.
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Girl Goes Tech (GGT) is about a 26-year-old, female tech-addict exploring her geeky side and writing about social media, mobile trends and applications.