Twenty-One Top Twitter Tips
Entrepreneurs
Twenty-One Top Twitter Tips
Daniel Adler, 07.31.09, 06:15 PM EDT
Silly time waster? Sure. Powerful business tool? You bet.
You’ve heard about Twitter–that curious, strangely addictive social-networking technology that facilitates torrents of truncated messages among millions of users. You might even know your hashtags from your re-tweets. But how can you make money with it?
Forbes canvassed scads of businesses and pricey social-networking gurus looking for honest answers. Admittedly, we were skeptical. After all, how much can you accomplish in 140 characters or less?
Turns out there are myriad ways Twitter can have an impact, and not just as a marginal marketing tool. Indeed, we found 21 clever ways to use Twitter–for everything from boosting sales and scouting talent, to conducting market research and raising capital. Chances are, there will be many more.
1. Coupon Campaigns
Congratulations for getting to the end of this sentence. “As an online culture, people are not reading; they’re scanning,” says Dell Computer’s Stefanie Nelson, voice of @DellOutlet. “The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful you’re going to be.” Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet’s Facebook page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com. This strategy works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce–you don’t need an ad agency to write 140 characters. California Tortilla, a chain of 39 causal Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, Md., spread coupon “passwords”–through its Twitter feed @caltort–that must be spoken at checkout to be redeemed.
© Kevin Russ/istockphoto.com
2. To-Go Sales Channel
You can’t make purchases directly from Twitter, but you can get one step closer to a medium vanilla latte. Patrons of the Coffee Groundz, a popular Houston java joint, can log their orders with General Manager J.R. Cohen (@CoffeeGroundz), which he receives on his BlackBerry. Customers send direct (as in, private) messages, rather than public ones, which tend to clog the Twitter feed. Cohen says he gets as many as 20 requests a day, including large catering orders; various Twitter efforts (including broader marketing campaigns) have increased sales 20-30%. He’s even stolen share from the nearby Starbucks.
3. Viral Marketing
In July, in honor of its 10th birthday, London-based do-it-yourself Web site builder Moonfruit gave away 11 Macbook Pro computers and 10 iPod Touches. Contestants had to tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. (Hashtags collate Twitter responses.) Nearly a month after the contest ended, traffic to Moonfruit’s Web site is up 300%. Sales are up 20% this month, more than paying off the $15,040.80 investment. And the Moonfruit Web site has climbed onto the first Google page for “free website builder” (it used to be on the fourth). Word to the wise, says Moonfruit founder Wendy White: Such campaigns must be courteous and fit with a company’s brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere: “There’s a fine line between annoying people and getting the thumbs up.”
4. “Conversational” Marketing
Online shoe-retailer Zappos doesn’t market on Twitter–it talks. A small army of 436 Zappos employees use Twitter (Chief Exeuctive Tony Hsieh leads the way with a shade over 1 million followers). “You get to see Zappos people and culture before you decide to buy anything from them,” says Shel Israel, author of Twitterville. That humanizing effect turns out to be a potent sales driver, especially for small companies, says Aaron Magness, director of business development and brand marketing for Zappos: “It’s easier for them to embrace openness.”
5. Artful Customer Service
Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast, uses Twitter to help 200 to 300 subscribers a day with issues ranging from sporadic Internet service to errant e-mails. Frank and his team receive direct questions at the @comcastcares account and search for complaints. Twitter has a built-in search, but it’s more efficient to set up a permanent search on one of the free, third-party Twitter applications, such as TweetDeck. Eliason’s key to success: maintaining friendly relationships, not foisting unwanted advice. “If they want assistance, they’ll let me know,” he says. Eliason has a 10-person help desk at his disposal, but small businesses can use Twitter to provide better customer service, too. Even a little help goes a long way.
6. Focus Groups
Back in the old days (last year), companies actually paid customers to solicit their opinions. There were 3.37 million mentions of Starbucks on Twitter through early May 2009, and all of that information is available for less than the cost of a frappucino. “There is a major element of Twitter that’s about listening and learning,” says Brad Nelson, the man behind @Starbucks. “Twitter is a leading indicator.” Collecting the information is as simple as searching for references to your company. Morgan Johnston, Manager of Corporate Communications at Jet Blue, abolished a $50 fee for carry-on bikes after hearing complaints via Twitter. “Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine,” says Johnston. “We watch for customers’ discussions about amenities we have, and what they’d like to see made better.” For a more formal approach, lob a simple post asking for feedback and provide a hashtag to collect the responses.
7. (Very) Direct Sales
Coming to New York and looking for a hotel? It might find you first. The Roger Smith Hotel in New York City uses search.twitter.com to troll for customers. Those who book a room after a Twitter referral get a 10% discount off the lowest-rate rooms. The hotel estimates that Twitter and other social media have brought in $15,000 to $20,000 in additional sales over the last year, thanks to enthusiastic customers who refer the hotel to their thousands of Twitter followers. Says the hotel’s Brian Simpson, who helps manage its social-media strategy: “It validates us more when other people talk about us than when we talk about ourselves.”
8. Poaching Customers
“Twitter is not just a kid story,” says Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. Brogan should know: He is one of several Twitter experts advising companies on how to spy on their competition and to swoop in with a better service or discount. Nathan Egan, founder of Freesource Agency, a social-networking consultancy, describes how to do it: Using a free application, such as TweetDeck, set up a permanent search for all permutations of your competitor’s name, as well as words that convey dissatisfaction (“sucks” or “hate”). Public replies to those new prospects are dangerous, as your competition may see them, so the best bet is to follow them and get followed back, allowing you to send direct messages.
9. News Feed (aka, the “dumb pipe”)
Twitter is ultimately about conversation, but it can be a one-way blast mechanism, too. Google has over 1.2 million followers, yet follows a paltry 162 in return. The @google Twitter account compiles and links to content the company posts elsewhere. “Our blog network is the primary way we put out information, and then we have the Twitter layer on top of it,” said Karen Wickre, senior manager of corporate communications at Google. News organizations such as CNN take a similar approach. Soon, Twitter will mesh seamlessly with content management systems. “You’ll publish an article and automatically tweet it,” says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research. Shoving stuff down the dumb pipe works for small companies, too. Albion’s Oven, a bakery in London, alerts its Twitter followers when a fresh batch of croissants leaves the oven, but follows no one in return. (But, then, it’s hard to have a conversation with an oven.)
10. Customer Expectation Management
Bad things happen–it’s how you condition customers to deal with it that counts. Jet Blue tweets flight delays. In April, when a Stanley Cup broadcast was interrupted, cable provider Comcast used Twitter to immediately inform its subscribers that the culprit was a lightning storm, and that transmission would soon be restored. Small companies–like United Linen, a linens and uniform company in Bartlesville, Okla.–can manage expectations this way, too. When a major snowstorm hit the area, Marketing Director Scott Townsend used Twitter to let customers know deliveries would be delayed. “It was a great way to send information to everyone,” he says. “They understood we wouldn’t be there, but they wanted to know what our status was, and updates as the situation changed.”
11. Targeted Content
All the save-the-planet talk notwithstanding, your friendly neighborhood NASCAR fan is unlikely to plunk down for a Prius. Ford Motor gets that, which is why it uses separate Twitter accounts for sustainable products (@FordDriveGreen) and its gas-guzzling Ford Mustang (@FordMustang). “We’ve segmented Twitter into niches,” says Scott Monty, Ford’s digital and multimedia communications manager. “We give customers a choice as to how they want to consume information.” Whole Foods takes a similar approach, with separate accounts for cheese, wine and beer, and recipes. “Customers get sick of hearing about specials they’re not interested in,” says Freesource’s Egan. “You can fatigue your fan base.” Several free applications let you manage multiple accounts, such as CoTweet (Ford’s app of choice), so you don’t have to sign in and out of Twitter.
12. Mobile Marketing
The rough economy has forced restaurants to get creative. Some have sprouted wheels. Food trucks tweet their location from iPhones to let customers know where they will be. Believe it or not, all that digital chatter forms a bond. “We try to foster a culture by interaction with the people around us,” says Mike Prasad, social media director at Kogi, a fleet of Korean BBQ trucks in Los Angeles. “Now, Kogi isn’t about getting a taco, it’s about having an experience.”
13. Corralling Eyeballs
During last year’s NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, Turner Broadcasting managed to weave social-media feeds into its home page. Fans accessed the conversation by logging onto Twitter through TNT.com, and the tweets were also posted on Twitter with links back to TNT.com. Those forums mean more Web traffic–and thus more advertising revenue. “It’s exciting to sell this to an advertiser,” said Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Gigya Socialize, the brains behind the integration technology.
14. Call for Change
Several Web sites, including Twitition and TinyPetition, allow users to generate petitions through Twitter. People tweet the petition with a link back to the host Web site, where it can be “signed” by logging in with your Twitter credentials. Now, petitioning the Jonas Brothers to come to New Zealand (a recent effort on Twitition) may be of limited entrepreneurial value. But small businesses could easily use the petition strategy as well–say, to lobby for less draconian regulation. Says Freesource’s Egan: “You can get people together and let voices be heard.”
15. Vendor Selection
Twitter can snag customers, but how about suppliers? Crowdspring, an online marketplace that marries businesses with graphic designers used Twitter to build up its stable of contributors – now 12,000 strong globally. Business travelers can apply this same logic.
16. Conflict Resolution
Wiggly Wigglers, a Herfordshire, U.K.-based marketer of gardening and farming supplies, was recently overcharged $10,528.56 by British Telecom. Five months passed without restitution. Finally, Wiggly owner Heather Gorringe hit the Twitter-sphere, asking if anyone else had had problems with BT. @BTCare sent Gorringe a message within 30 minutes promising help; two days later, the bill was amended. “When I phone them up, I’m an isolated call to deal with, so I’m less important,” says Gorringe. “But if I tweet, and 1,193 people re-tweet, 100,000 people see it within 30 seconds.”
17. Internal Communication (With A Marketing Kicker)
IBM likes to say it “ideates.” Big Blue’s researchers across the globe use Twitter to flesh out their big ideas, if only in dribs and drabs. The marketing folks joined in, too, with @IBMResearch, providing an open chat room for the world to monitor. The ID now has over 4,700 followers, including lots of sundry tech geeks. (Critical intellectual property doesn’t see the light of day, of course.)
18. Employee Recruitment
Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, trains its recruiters on Twitter and other social media. An automated program sends prospects a direct message whenever a position opens up, and the messages are opened 30% of the time. The trick, says Arie Ball, vice president of talent acquisition at Sodexo, is to be as personal and engaging as possible: “People get an insider’s view, a sense if this is a company they want to work for.” The company says that using Twitter as a recruitment tool has helped cut its investment in online job boards by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
19. “Tweet-Ups”
Houston-based Coffee Groundz hosts regular meetings–or “tweet-ups”–that bring hundreds of customers into a store. RedWire, an online collaboration provider, uses Twitter to spread the word about Wired Wednesdays, a weekly gathering of entrepreneurs looking to share ideas. “There’s a real time benefit,” says Erin Bury, community manager at RedWire. “We’re trying to facilitate real-time conversations.”
20. Research
Hedge funds have long tried to get an edge by using computer programs to scan news sources for nuggets of information. The next iteration, care of StreamBase: software that monitors Twitter for gems traders can use. Automatic searches via third-party applications such as TweetDeck can mine gold, too.
21. Raising Capital
As in the physical world, no one likes to be solicited for contributions online. A better Twitter tack: Don’t ask, just inform. Last Thanksgiving, Epic Change, a nonprofit that encourages people to tell their stories to transform communities, launched the Tweetsgiving Web site, with the help of theKbuzz, a word-of-mouth marketing firm. Tweetsgiving asked people to tweet what they were grateful for, and compiled the responses at #tweetsgiving, with a link back to the Tweetsgiving site, where users had the option of contributing money to build classrooms in Tanzania. Over the 48-hour campaign, 15,000 people came to the Tweetsgiving site; 360 donated, for a total of $11,000. “We never asked people to give,” says Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change. “We got people invested in their own, personalized way.”
Source: Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/31/top-twitter-tips-entrepreneurs-technology-twitter.html