How tweet it is.” Wasn’t that the famous line from Jackie Gleason? He actually said, “How sweet it is,” although tweeting can be pretty sweet.
Do you use Twitter in your personal life? Do you use it for your business? I’ll be honest, a few years ago, I didn’t see Twitter becoming a significant marketing opportunity for your business. It started out as a pure person-to-person social media communication site. Boy, was I wrong.
The notion of a short marketing message to a company’s audience has been around a long time. Short tire company slogans paved the way for years of success, and still do. You hear the slogan and immediately relate it to the business. Recognize these tire tag lines and slogans?
- A better way forward.
- Where the rubber meets the road.
- Power is nothing without control.
- Because so much is riding on your tires.
Twitter has become an extension of that type of marketing. It can be used to promote your business, keep existing customers coming back and attract new customers. A “tweet” is the compact 140 character message that is short and powerful. But it takes careful planning and creative writing to pack the right message into those short messages. Best of all, Twitter can cost you nothing except time, unless you decide to take advantage of “promoted tweets.”
Twitter has followed in the footsteps of Google with respect to paid advertising. Twitter offers promoted tweets. According to Twitter, promoted tweets “are ordinary tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers. Promoted tweets are clearly labeled as ‘promoted’ when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, promoted tweets act just like regular tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, ‘favorited’ and more.”The best form of Twitter growth is what we call “organic.” That’s when your customers (raving fans) do the work for you. They tweet out good things about your business and retweet what you have posted. Friends trust friends.
It’s good to use hashtags in your tweets. In the October 2014 edition of Modern Tire Dealer, I explained what hashtags were all about (#EverythingYouEverWantedToKnowAboutHashtags). A good rule of thumb is not to overuse them. Don’t use more than one or two in your tweet.
Here are some important things to know about hashtags.
1. They are made up and anyone can make them up.
2. No one owns them, unless you get them trademarked.
3. You should capitalize the first letter of every word because that makes it easier to read.
4. Some are generic (#BestPlaceToDine), some are very specific (#WeAreBC).
5. When you click on a hashtag, it redirects you to search results on that site.
6. It’s an easy way for sites to track trending topics.
7. When you search for a hashtag on a site like Twitter or Facebook, you will see all the postings on the site that have referenced that hashtag. It’s an indexing methodology for that site.
8. They are free.
9. If you make one up (or you think you made one up), search on it first to see what’s out there already. You might be surprised.
10. Don’t overuse them in tweets, blogs, ads or Facebook posts — no more than two or three per item.
11. Hashtags don’t work on smart phones (yet), but they still work on the sites you are posting to from your phone.
Don’t be afraid to offer coupons to followers that retweet your tweets. It’s a great way to attain that organic growth.
If you are going to be an active Twitter participant for the sake of your business, make sure to put a twitter feed on your website. This is another way to get a broader coverage of your tweets to your target audience. There are plenty of tools that can assist you in creating the Twitter feed and managing your success in Twitter-space.
You should use Twitter to create a “business personality” for your followers. Your tweets should have a certain personality that is consistent. Make sure the style reflects your business philosophy. Be sure to include pictures in your tweets. People like visuals, and Twitter has exploded with graphics. Here are some interesting Twitter statistics:
- In 2010, Twitter had 30 million users.
- In 2016, there are 1.3 billion registered Twitter users.
- Twitter has more than 310 million monthly active users.
- 65 million active Twitter users are in the United States.
- The average number of followers per Twitter user is 208.
- 44% of the Twitter users have never sent a tweet.
In closing, I suggest you embrace Twitter if you haven’t done so already. It has evolved into a viable means for business advertising, customer generation and customer retention. It’s one more tool in the marketing bag. Don’t tweet yourself short.
As CEO and president of WECnology LLC (www.wecnology.com), Wayne Croswell is a “complimentary technology advisor” for independent tire dealers. Croswell can be reached at [email protected] or (603) 249-5530.
To read more of Wayne Croswell's columns, see:
You ane Your Software Provider: How the Relationship has Evolved
#EverythingYouEverWantedToKnowAboutHashtags
