Twitter’s now the big fad of today and makes me wonder if it’s akin to the marathon dancing fad that took place during the great depression. In any case, it’s interesting; lots of people spend time on it and as a marketer, you should be thinking of ways to leverage these clusters of people to your brand’s benefit. Here are some basic steps on how to do that.
Create a profile : First things, first. Go to Twitter, hit the “New to Twitter – Sign up now” button and get going. Ensure that a comprehensive profile is created.
Begin tweeting : You have a 140 character limit to write. Begin with posting a link to something of interest to you and comment on the same, link to a news article you liked, something unusual that struck you today or something. Just write on it and observe what people are doing. This will help you get a feel of what Twitter’s all about.
Add followers : This is easy. Search twitter to see which people are tweeting about something that appeals to you. Once you see tweets that interest you or your company. View the tweeter’s profile and if it’s still interesting to you, follow them. Another way to do this is to visit your favorite blogs or social networks and if you see that the people you’re interested in have a Twitter account, you can begin following them. Also, view the follower list of someone you’re following – that’ll help you get some more folks who you can follow.
Monitor conversations : Twitter’s easy search interface helps you do this. Simply enter your company’s or product’s name and see the string of tweets by folks who have talked about you. You can get an updated version of this search by using RSS. Once you’ve found a list of people who are talking about your company, view the feedback. If there’s a complaint, connect with the right people internally to get it addressed and then tweet the complainer with a solution. A happy user will tweet positively for your brand and if he has a large following, that’s a very good thing for you. If the user has something positive to say, thank him/her and then ask for suggestions on what your company can do to 
enhance his product experience.
Connect with opinion leaders : From your searches, you can identify the folks who are opinion leaders in your industry and have a large following. Follow their tweets to see if they’re saying anything about your brand and if so, address it. You can also use them as sounding boards for any new product tweaks, new product launches or other events.
Broadcast (but, with caution) : Feel free to broadcast special offers or deals and monitor the response from people. Use your analytics tool to see if these promotions work i.e. if any meaningful conversions took place. However, do not forget that Twitter is an interactive tool and blindly broadcasting might lose you some followers.
Use Tools to enhance your Twitter experience : There are tons of useful tools that you can use to make your Twitter experience as pleasurable as possible. Here are just a smattering as recommeneded by the folks from SmashingApps.
- Mr. Tweet : Mr. Tweet helps you easily build meaningful relationships by looking through your network and tweets and identifying users that are relevant to you.
- TwitterFriends : TwitterFriends helps to find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you. You can also visualize the network of your relevant contacts and their contacts.
- Twitter Grader :Twitter Grader measures the power of a profile. In simple words, you can measure the power and authority of your twitter profile using this service. Very handy.
- TinyURL : TinyURL rakes a long URL and makes it short. Very hand for a tweet if your URL is long.
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