Social Success in 2010 Part One – Twitter

In 2006, a micro-blogging website crept onto the Internet and allowed users to share 140 character messages. Nobody paid much attention. Then, as the decade drew to a close, millions of people stood up and took notice. Over the last year, Twitter was the fastest growing website on the internet and businesses have been signing up in their thousands.

If your business is going to succeed online in 2010, you’ll need to embrace Twitter for brand management, sales purposes, or to help out with your SEO.

Using Twitter for Brand Management

One of Twitter’s most useful innovations is the live search function. By using either Twitter Search or a Twitter client, you can keep up to date with what your customers and competitors are saying about you.

If you’re offering a service that requires technical advice or support, you can take a leaf from BTs book. The BT Customer Care account (@btcare) is on hand to nip complaints in the bud, and offer advise on making the most of their products and services – a prime example of reacting to feedback that springs up on social media sites.

If you want to be more proactive, Nandos (@nandos_official) have demonstrated that you can attract new customers and engage with existing customers by getting involved in conversations and offering free chicken with gleeful abandon.

Once you’ve got the hang of reacting to feedback and communicating with consumers, you can take Twitter to the next level with offers and competitions.

Using Twitter for Viral Offers

By using the Twitter community’s habit of compulsively retweeting content, you can spread your message to the masses by the clever use of offers and draws. All you have to do is give your customers an incentive to advertise your wares.

“@YourBusiness – Win a free doohickey. Just RT this message and enter into the YourBusiness.com Prize Draw!”

It’s that simple. Everyone likes free stuff, and entering is simple. All they need to do is tell all their friends about your products and services. Then all of their friends will tell a second set of people – and your advert will spread across the network.

Using Twitter for SEO

Of course, it’s not just the Twitter network you want to be found on. Search is still going to bring you traffic, so it’s important that you get listed. Thanks to Google and Bing adopting Real Time Search you can get instant listings, although listings that are brief and fleeting.

Only three tweets at a time are shown on page one of Google, and these are rotated every few seconds. However, if you use an offer like the one above and have dozens or hundreds of people retweeting your URL an hour, you can generate a fair few hits.

Twitter’s Limitations

Twitter isn’t a miracle service, and it does have limitations. The 140 character limit (aim for 110 to allow room for retweeting) is the most obvious, but the fact that Twitter moves quickly means you need to give it attention.

Twitter is at its strongest when you use it to communicate with your consumers, but it also comes into its own when it drives traffic. And if there’s one type of website that Twitter loves to drive traffic to, it’s a blog.

Check back tomorrow for Social Success in 2010 Part Two – Blogging

Social Success in 2010 – Introduction

Social Success in 2010 Part Two – Blogging

Social Success in 2010 Part Three – Taking Your Business to the Masses

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• Social Success in 2010 Part Three – Taking Your Business to the Masses (1)
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