Social Marketing

I was at a holiday gathering this season and had a short conversation about Twitter with my husband’s Grandfather, Steve. He wondered “Why” in regards to Twitter.

I told him I wouldn’t Twitter if it weren’t for my business - and unless you have lots of actual, real-life friends on Twitter, it’s probably worthless… That is, unless you’re working to establish, grow or stay in touch for business purposes. If that is the case, you should be Twittering.

The Biggest Twitter Mistake

The biggest mistake I see people making on Twitter is being all promo all the time. No one wants to read “tweets” that are you being a marketing machine 24-7. It’s tedious.

Don’t do it.

The Second Biggest Twitter Mistake

So, you know not to be a salesman all the time - so whaddaya write about? Get more homey, more personal, right? Sorta.

NO ONE CARES THAT YOU ARE GOING TO BED, EATING LUNCH, BATHING YOUR CAT, ETC.

Yeah, you’ve gotta be personal, interesting, put some value in there, but don’t take it down to the level of announcing that you’ll be clipping your toenails at 8:07pm PST. No value there either.

A Proper Tweet

Interesting, valuable, funny, inane, insane. If you wouldn’t call your friend and take time out of their day to tell them about it, it’s probably not a worthwhile tweet. That said, if the opposite is true and you think a friend might enjoy your thought, comment, link, then by all means, share it with the community.

Watch folks in your industry or area of interest who have big followings - what do they talk about. As always, more can be learned by successful example then any ebook.

(P.S. Please don’t buy any kind of “How to Use Twitter for Marketing” ebooks or other such crud. That’s just silly. Go to Twitter, sign up for an account, follow a few people and start posting, for goodness sake).

Integrating Blogging With Twitter

This is where the magic happens. If an individual blog reader isn’t into Twitter, I still want them to see my tweets. By the same token, I want my Twitter followers to make it back to my blog. Oh, and I want it to all happen automatically.

I use Alex King’s Twitter Tools Wordpress plugin to automatically post my tweets here at the blog each night, and it also automatically posts an announcement to my Twitter every time I post a new blog entry. It’s smart enough not to double-post - i.e. when it auto-posts my days’ tweets in a post here, it doesn’t post that “new blog post” announcement to Twitter, since that would be redundant.

In this way I cover all bases - bringing new people in to my blog who see my posts on Twitter, and allowing my blog readers to still see the interesting stuff that makes it to Twitter (but might not be worthy of an entire blog post).

Oh, and all my Twitter posts also automatically end up on my Facebook page (sphere of influence widens).

The Answer to “Link Roundups”

I detest the “Link Roundup” or “Power Linking” type blog posts, mostly because I’m too scattered to put one together properly. I read something, lose the link, can’t think of anything better to say then, “You should read this, it’s tight” or some other oh-so-thoughtful Californian insight.

Instead, links I like and think would be of interest to my blog readers get Twittered, then they appear in each day’s automatically generated Twitter roundup post.

It’s much faster then making the blog post by hand and I can post the tweet in the moment, when I’m at the of-interest page, before I forget, move on, or get accosted by 1 year old sticky fingers.

Ok, But Still, Why?

I hear you, “Ok Michelle… So I see you like to use Twitter to pull in new people to your blog, and to post quick clips to your blog that aren’t deserving of a whole post - but is that it?”

It’s marketing, luv. My blog is about social marketing and social media and Web 2.0. Twitter has an audience of people all into the latest-and-greatest web stuff. It’s a match made in heaven. Plus, it’s a medium where some high profile folks are somewhat available for direct messages. It’s getting my face, my name, out there, all time.

I see some cool things posted from people and meet new folks too, and I enjoy that aspect too, although I’m not a slave to keeping up with what everyone’s posted.

Who Should Twitter

You should be on Twitter if you have any focus on Web 2.0 or social marketing.

You should be on Twitter if you market in any mass-appeal areas, like diet/health, finance, technology, shopping.

You should be on Twitter if there are people on Twitter you want to connect with but haven’t yet been able to.

And, you should be on Twitter if you want an easy way to post link round-ups on your blog.

I’m MichelleM on Twitter. You can join me here.

This post inspired by DoshDosh’s post “17 Ways You Can Use Twitter,” another great read on using Twitter for marketing.

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