Twitter Marketing 101: How to get started

Wow, twitter is a tweeting with millions of self proclaimed social marketing experts all tweeting the latest and greatest new social marketing gadget, app, or technique. That’s all well and good for those that are already swimming in the twitter data stream, but what about those who are simply looking to get started? How do you learn to swim? What about those who are asking themselves ‘What is this twitter thing?’ well this blog post is for you, my intrepid friends!

What is the big deal with Twitter?

I’ll spare you the social networking rhetoric about connecting with people and jump right into twitter for business basics.

Twitter basics are comprised of 4 things. Your website, a blog, the ever so practical bit.ly website, and of course twitter.

Now, I’m assuming you’re a business person and not someone who wants to share with the world the incredible fact that you had bacon and eggs for breakfast. I’m assuming you want to get some business results out of this endeavour.
Twitter is a pointer

You’ve heard the expression ‘Content drives traffic‘ right? If not, simply speaking, it means that content is what attracts people to your site, your blog, etc. Twitter, in this context, is the thing that will point people to your site, your blog, or whatever else you want.

Now, I’m a B2B Marketer, so I’ll use a B2B example. Jack is the president of a company that cleans office furniture and apparel, but demand for his services has stagnated and he wants to generate more business.

Jack has a corporate website, nothing fancy, a simple little thing that tells people who he is and what his company does. Jack decides he wants to dive into this Social Marketing thing so he goes on twitter and gets an account using his business name as a handle. Then he stares at the screen and thinks, ‘Ok, so what now?‘

Well, the first step is filling out your profile and getting a picture. Jack decides to use his corporate logo as his picture. The bio allows for 160 characters. This is a place to describe your business or services. Jack thinks about it for a second and writes: “We’re expert cleaners of office furniture and apparel.” For now that’ll do, Jack knows he can always change it later (and he will!). Then, in the settings menu, he plugs in his website’s URL, where in the world his business is located, and hits save. After a while exploring the options in the settings menu, changing some colours, trying some backgrounds, Jack is finally satisfied with the result.

He hits ‘Home’ a few times to see if he has any followers. He doesn’t. But that’s ok, Jack knows that Social Marketing works best on the long term.

Jack is an expert in his field. He knows everything about cleaning office furniture and apparel. And therein lies the key to Social Marketing.

Jack finds a blog platform, Blogger, WordPress, there are tons to choose from, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Not wanting to waste too much time on this, he chooses WordPress and opens an account. Jack is feeling a little intimidated by all the blank screens, but carries on with his efforts.

He reads a few ‘help’ files and figures out how WordPress works (there are many blogs about how blogs work). He still has no idea what Tags are, but at least he knows how to write and publish a post. He calls his Marketing friend Chris and asks him about Tags. Chris tells him that simply speaking, tags are what people type into Google to find your blog. Chris suggests ‘Professional office cleaning services’, ‘furniture cleaning’, ‘Montreal office furniture cleaning’, and whatever the blog post is about.

Jack smiles and starts writing his first post, “The dangers of dirty office furniture”. Jack finds a royalty free picture on an image website like stock.xchng and adds it to his blog post. Chris told him that pictures are important.

Now what? No matter what blogging platform you use, you should configure your profile first. Make sure that there is a link to your corporate website. A description of what you do. Fill out your Bio. Who are you and why should people read what you write? And start slow! Take your time! You’ll get the hang of it really fast, but it does take practice and dedication!

Let’s recap before letting the magic begin.

• Jack’s business has a website.
• Jack has a twitter account. The twitter account links to his website.
• Jack has a blog. The profile on his blog is complete, bio filled out, avatar (picture of you or your business logo) is up, and there’s a link to his website.
• Jack has generated content on his blog.

Now what?

Having spoken with Chris, Jack knows that he should tweet the fact that he has a new blog post. But when he copy/pastes the URL of his blog https://jacksofficecleaningservices.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/the-dangers-of-dirty-office-furniture/ into twitter, he realises that there is no space left to write anything else! That’s when he remembers bit.ly.

He goes to the bit.ly website, fills out another profile, sets up his account and copy/pastes his long blog URL into the URL shortner. It gives him something more manageable (ie: https://bit.ly/69RnGN), and allows him to track how many people click on that link. Jack opens twitter and writes:

“New blog post. The dangers of dirty office furniture. https://bit.ly/69RnGN”

And, holding his breath in anticipation, he hits enter.

Nothing much happens. Jack returns to bit.ly to track the progress of his post. Nothing. No clicks. No torrents of people calling him. Jack takes some time to learn more about twitter and those mysterious number signs (#) people seem to be using all the time.

Returning to twitter, he sees that he has a follower! Chris told him that it’s proper etiquette to thank people for following so Jack writes his new follower a Direct Message: “Hi! Thanks for following me!” While doing so, Jack sees that his new follower claims to be a ‘Social Marketing and SEO expert’, he has thousands of followers and follows hundreds of people. His new friend’s tweets are mostly comprised of links to twitter tips and tricks. Jack decides to follow him. By doing so, Jack has access to many articles about how to use twitter and spends some time reading them.

Jack decides to register with wefollow.com and to repost his tweet using his newfound twitter knowledge.

“New blog post. The dangers of dirty office furniture. https://bit.ly/69RnGN #business #marketing #danger #safety #CEO #CNN #office”

Hashmarks (#) are little tags that group a tweet with other tweets with the same hashmark. Many people follow hashmarks, or click on them to see what’s new in a specific field of interest. Jack refreshes his screen and sees that he suddenly has 8 new followers. He thanks them all and returns to bit.ly. His eyebrows shoot upwards as he sees that his link has been clicked 14 times!

And that’s how you begin on twitter.

For a week or so, Jack writes a new blog article everyday. “What viruses live on your desk?” “Cleaning office furniture reduces risk for H1N1.” “A clean office is a productive office.” “Increase office morale, clean your carpets.” “Dirty office furniture responsible for 20% of all sick days.”

In no time, traffic on his website has increased dramatically. Once Jack got familiar and comfortable with the blog+twitter concept, it only took him a few minutes per day to get things done. Now Jack has over 100 followers, and more flock to his words everyday, retweeting his wisdom all across the planet. Business is good.

Of course, you don’t have to do all this yourself, you could always simply outsource this Marketing activity to professionals. Not everyone is a writer, not everyone is comfortable using social networking sites, and you don’t have to be! Remember that. Your job, your skills, your knowledge makes you an expert in your field. If you’re a plumber, a lawyer, a doctor, a CEO, whatever, no one is going to think less of you because you’re not a social marketing expert. I certainly can’t fix my plumbing myself, defend someone in court, or perform surgery, that’s why I hire experts to do those things for me. And it’s normal to do that.

Last words:Social networks are like martial-arts dojos. As a novice, you don’t walk into one proclaiming you’re the best thing since Bruce Lee. Someone might want to test that claim.
Make a plan and stick with it. A good way to start is to commit to 1 blog post per week.
Read-up on the subject. Learn the basics.
Be polite. Everyone might be a potential customer.
Never buy twitter followers. If you do, I’ll find you and make fun of you.
And most importantly, have a little fun and be patient!

Now, a little note for the experts out there: I know, I know, there is so much more! This humble post barely scratches the surface of what can be accomplished using Social Marketing. I just wanted to write something for all the people out there who don’t spend 18 hours per day on-line.

In my next posts we’ll explore links and why they are so very important, techniques for catching the ever elusive longtail, and the habits of various other little critters that live on the Internet.

Please, comments are more than welcome! What’s your take on the subject?