Twitter’s ushered in a new dawn of communication. It’s an amazingly powerful social interaction and communication medium that has impacted how news is gathered or sent out and how buzz is created. And with its mega growth, businesses have taken note.
According to Twibs, a business directory which helps you find brands on Twitter, 18000 businesses are now using Twitter as part of their social media marketing.
So, just how does a brand use Twitter to achieve its marketing objectives? Here are some examples…
Dell, Whole Foods, Starbucks are doing it.
Brands ranging from Starbucks to Dell to Whole Foods have Twitter accounts boasting tens of thousands of followers. Dell has 1.1 million followers, Whole Foods has 1.3 million and Starbucks has about 295K followers. This large membership allows these brands to communicate instantly with their most avid customers. Whole Foods leads discussions on their brand, their operating philosophies, recipe sharing, etc. (I just learned from Twitter that Dell acquired Perot Systems for $3.9bn.)
JetBlue has 1.2 million followers and they tweet a variety of messages to them providing solutions or suggestions about any queries they may have. Simply amazing, a million dollar B2C brand is now talking directly to its customers. This is a situation where customer support and interaction has been taken to a new level and from reports, JetBlue seems to be doing rather well. Ditto with Southwest, even though they have half of JetBlue’s followers or even United Airlines who has 35ooo followers. According to a Twitter analysis by Compete.com, 1 in 5 visitors to these airline websites also visited Twitter. By July 2009, between 17-22% of all visitors to these company websites visited Twitter and interacted with the brands there.
Google has 1.6 million followers, Yahoo has 21000 followers and Bing has 30000 followers. No guesses about who’s winning the browser wars. Google dispenses tips about all its products as well as uses Twitter to drive traffic to blogs penned by its employees like Matt Cutts. The New York Times has 1.8million followers, CNN has 2.7 million followers and the Economist has 68000 followers. These media firms use their accounts to provide their followers with the latest news on their networks. It’s almost like Twitter was made for news media companies.
Finally, Zappos has 1.3 million followers, Oprah has 2.2 million and the White House has 1.2 million followers. These astronomical figures have become a reality for these brands ( I haven’t even see their Facebook pages yet) and for now, it seems that Twitter is the medium of choice for direct communication with brands and their audiences.
So, these brands have followers. What should I do?
For a start, if you don’t have a plan for including Twitter as part of your social media, start working on one pronto. I’ve written a post on how you can get familiar with Twitter as well as how to use Twitter to promote your business. Use these posts as a starting point.
Some critical questions need to be answered.
- What do you hope to accomplish with Twitter? State goals in the forms of actual sales, actual leads and email sign-ups. Front end goals could be # of followers and # of daily tweets. If your goal is to merely observe customer conversations about your brand, then the number of brand mentions is another metric in line with your awareness goals.
- Will your Twitter account be an overtly corporate-sponsored initiative with a see/hear/speak-no-evil philosophy or will the account act as an objectively positioned brand ambassador?
- Will you establish personalities associated with your brand to interact with your customers a la JetBlue or will you use your account functionally to distribute deals or tips related to your products? Too much self-promotion is a turn-off, but everybody loves a deal.
Your goals with Twitter can range from simply listening to the dialog around your brand to supporting a particular promotion to guiding customers. Every business needs to approach Twitter differently so ensure that you spend some time studying the medium as well as experimenting with the kind of messaging that works for your brand.
Finally, follow the basic principles of branding when you tweet; honesty, relevancy, transparency and respect. It will be sure to hold you in good stead.
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To effectively use Twitter for marketing, without spending all your precious time on Twitter, you need to set up a strategy. A good strategy that builds your Twitter following will turn you into an authority in your niche, and will effectively promote your product, service and business.