No matter what type of business you’re running, it’s crucial that you have a strong presence on
Twitter. Twitter is an incredibly important and powerful social media network that is one of the
largest on the net with approximately 316 million monthly active users and about a billion
registered users. Like Facebook, Twitter has grown to become a household name and needs no
introduction. It has become a part of our everyday lives, even featuring in movies and TV shows
as a prominent plot point; and its marketing potential is gigantic.
Apart from its size and prominence, Twitter benefits from a number of features that make it
perfectly tailored for use as a marketing tool. While some businesses will certainly be better
suited to its unique advantages than others, there is no denying that every type of company can
benefit from it in some way or another. In the best case scenario, it could help you to improve
your customer relations, to provide a better service and to greatly increase your leads, your
turnover and your profits. In fact, some businesses will find that they actually can’t cope with the
amount of business that comes their way as a result of a new Twitter campaign. If you get
‘Retweeted’ by a prominent user, or if one of your posts starts ‘trending’, then you can find
yourself inundated by a swarm of new customers. This can be a little like opening ‘Pandora’s
Box’ and it’s not always so easy to put the Genie back in the bottle…
But having ‘too many customers’ is definitely a unique complaint and for most of us this kind of
growth is pretty much the stuff of dreams.
So if you do want to open that Pandora’s Box, consider this your key to unlocking it. In this
book, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Twitter. That means we’ll cover the
basics but more importantly, we’ll be looking at the best strategies and approaches you can use
to really tap in and harness the power of Twitter. This book is about getting the best possible
results in the minimum time and with the minimum effort. If you’re currently just treading water
on Twitter, this will help you to start seeing massive growth and to have fun doing it – whether
you run a small business, a blog or something else entirely.
Are you ready?
Why Twitter is Perfect for Digital Marketing
Just before we jump in and start looking at all the strategies and hacks you can use to get
ahead on Twitter, let’s take a moment to examine what it is about Twitter that’s so perfect for
helping you get the word out. At the same time, we’ll be looking at what it is about Twitter
generally that has helped it to get to the point where it is.
Low Time Investment
The key idea behind Twitter is really that it limits the number of characters you can post or
‘Tweet’ (to 140 to be precise). What’s interesting about this concept is that on the face of it, it
sounds like a limiting factor. Twitter has restricted its users and made that a ‘feature’.
But this is a stroke of genius in an age where we’re constantly pushed for time and constantly
inundated with things to do. And from a marketing standpoint it’s amazing because it takes
literally a few seconds to send out a Tweet, versus uploading a blog post. That Tweet has the
potential to be seen by thousands, if not millions of people but it took you only seconds to write.
That’s a huge payoff for a very small amount of work, which makes it massively scalable, even
for a tiny company.
At the same time, the short amount of characters means that people will read the entire Tweet
without getting bored and it means that you can convey a large amount of information in a very
short timeframe. Tweets force you to be witty and to really make sure every word counts, which
means a dense amount of information in a short space – great for someone in a rush.
Another stroke of genius is the hashtag. With a hashtag, you can convey the subject matter of
your Tweet in another convenient way. A post about a beautiful sunset then could end with
‘#beauty’ or ‘#sunset’. Better yet, you can use the hashtag to discuss something that is currently
being discussed a lot or that is very contemporary. For instance, if you see something in the
news, you can comment on that news using the right hashtag. This means that people who are
interested in that subject can then search for the keyword and see all the posts on that topic –
it’s a great way for people to find what you’ve been sharing! You can also tag other users in
your comment with the ‘@’ symbol, which is a great way to get their attention or to discuss
something they have said or done.
Finally, Retweets mean that anyone who enjoys your content can share it with their followers.
Like the best social media sites, this allows Twitter to take full advantage of the viral potential of
any social network. In theory, a very well-thought out Tweet can be Retweeted multiple times,
allowing it to spread exponentially through networks of users. If you share a Tweet with 2,000
people and 200 of those re-share, and 50 of each of their users reshare… you’re starting to
reach a gigantic audience.
Additional Features
On top of the core features of Twitter, the platform has also grown to present many more
opportunities that we digital marketers can make use of. There are tons of apps, widgets and
other platforms for instance that make it very easy to enjoy Twitter in a convenient and bitesized format. Mobile users can even receive Tweets from users they’re following as
notifications, giving you much more direct access to your audience. Likewise, embedding
Twitter into the sidebar on your website can also aid growth considerably, as can using one of
the countless tools that allows you to automate the publishing of Twitter content. And that’s
before we’ve even mentioned the formalized advertising platform…
We’ll look at how to use all these features and much more over the coming chapters. For now,
the point to keep in mind is simply that Twitter has grown beyond its origins and is now an
incredibly flexible tool. In fact, it is perhaps the most flexible social network, thanks to its
minimalistic nature.
