Twitter has a new section on their website offering information on how businesses are using twitter for marketing and customer service.

This Twitter & Social Media Marketing Guide includes recommended books, Twitter definitions, and case studies of businesses using Twitter for marketing:

When people working in the Empire State Building twittered that they were craving ice cream delivery, New York local chain Tasti D Lite was there to listen and meet their need. When electronics buyers look for good deals, the Dell Outlet Twitter account helps them save money with exclusive coupons. When Houston’s coffee drinkers decide where to get their daily dose, many choose Coffee Groundz, which lets them order via Twitter.

The guide addresses topics such as “So how do businesses use Twitter?” and “Twitter Best Practices”.

Read more of the Twitter Social Media Marketing Guide on Twitter here:

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

Read Twitter Marketing Case Studies here: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_dell

There are many ways to use Twitter to market your organization, business or services.

Twitter is commonly used as a quick and easy way to microblog in 140 characters or less about the goings-on of one’s personal life. More and more businesses and organizations, however, are coming up with creative ways to use Twitter for effective online and word of mouth marketing.

First and foremost, Twitter is an interactive publishing medium. To use Twitter well for marketing you have to write, write often and write strategically.

Here are some high-level steps you need to take to use Twitter for marketing your organization, business or services

1. Get on Twitter – setup an account with a name that makes sense, is easy to spell and matches the name of your organization, business or services. If someone is already using your name then you have to get creative and come up with an alternative spelling or add a dash between two words etc.
2. Create a Twitter Marketing Strategy – Figure out how you can best use Twitter to your advantage and come up with a plan for how you’ll roll out your strategy including how you’ll get followers, the types of people/companies you’ll follow, posting frequency, posting content type, landing pages, on and offline promotion, etc. Some common Twitter strategies are:

• Post regular specials or sales on Twitter
• Use Twitter to search for people Tweeting questions you can answer as a way to build relationships and potential future customers
• If your business is mobile you can use Twitter to post your daily location
• Encourage word of mouth between your followers
• Post quality content with the aim to get others to Retweet and spread it to their followers
• Notify followers about events you’re attending or putting on

3. Start Following People on Twitter – Start following others on Twitter who are working in your industry or who are somehow related to your industry. See who those people are following. Follow some of those people too. Don’t go overboard following thousands of people right away or your account will quickly start looking like one of the many Twitter spammer accounts out there that follow thousands, have no followers and only post affiliate or viagra links
4. Setup URL Tracking using hootsuite or bit.ly or tinyurl so you can track which links you post get the most clicks
5. Use Proper Twitter Tools  & Twitter Etiquette – make sure you use good third party Twitter tool such as TweetDeck to enable you to post and read posts of those you’re following quickly and easily. Remember to not just post about yourself, how great you or your services are. Instead, interact with people, retweet useful & relevant content posted by those you’re following.
6. Setup Twitter Landing Pages on your company or organization’s website to optimize conversions when you drive people from your twitter page to your website.
7. Promote Your Twitter Address on your company or organization’s website, facebook page, in your email signature, etc. Even consider having your tweets publish directly to a section of your website or have your website blog posts publish directly to your Twitter account
8.Record, Measure & Assess Results. Keep doing what’s working. Stop doing what’s not working. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers for feedback along the way

What ways have you or others you’ve seen used Twitter to promote yourself, your organization, business or service?

Need help creating or implementing a Twitter marketing strategy? Contact us at Twitter Marketing Agency today for a free consultation and strategy session.

Small business owners around the world are discovering the benefit of using Twitter to speak with customers just as they would in person. Small businesses often get half of their business from word of mouth, so Twitter acts as the perfect digital word of mouth marketing tool. In fact, some business owners find it’s easier to setup and maintain a Twitter account than a business website, and the short 140-character posts offer a quick and easy way to stay in touch with clients and soon-to-be-clients.

Curtis Kimball opened a creme brulee cart in San Francisco not really knowing the purpose of Twitter. Now, with over 5000 Twitter followers who wait for him to post his daily cart location, Twitter helps keep his business flourishing on a daily basis.

Umi, a sushi restaurant in San Francisco, gets many new customers every day as a result of people finding them via Twitter. Umi staff tweet about the latest fresh fish of the night and offer specials to patrons who mention Twitter.

The Woodhouse Day Spa in Cincinati tweets discounts for manicures and massages. They prefer Twitter to email because it’s quick and can be sent from a cell phone.

Google Wave Marketing? Wait a Minute, What is Google Wave?

Coming late 2009, Google Wave is a mashup of communications tools provided by Google to make it easier for people to work and communicate online. (Read more about Google Wave)

What Could Google Wave Change for Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketers? 

• Google Wave could further fragment online audiences and limit the number and growth of today’s large social networks.
• Dave Coursey of PC World says “Google Wave as a mash-up of chat, e-mail, and document sharing, it’s really something else: Google Wave could be the Twitter that everyone really wants. Maybe it’s the Facebook, too.”
• Brands and social media marketers will need to dive deeper into authentic conversations in niches, to invite customers into personal and sometimes real-time conversations, collaborations, product testing & development.
• Along with Google Profiles, Google Search and Gmail, Google Wave will provide Google an even deeper look into our digital lives. Privacy advocates may not like it but marketers will love the ability to run very tightly focused Adwords campaigns in Wave.
• iPhone, Blackberry and Android mobile phone app developers and mobile marketers will likely concoct and use collaborative Wave-technology-based, multi-editor, real-time events in rich media and interactive apps as means to build customer loyalty and brand exposure, to get instant product testing feedback, to enable live user participation in webisodes and online reality, augmented reality events and products.

What do you think?

Google Wave is a mash-up of online communications tools to make it easier for people to work and communicate online. It’s a web application and computing platform designed to bring together social networking, IM, email and wiki — all with a collaborative focus and all working in real time.

 The folks at Google describe Google Wave as:

 “a new model for communication and collaboration on the web,”

“what email would look like if it were invented today”. 

Dave Coursey of PC World says “Google Wave as a mash-up of chat, e-mail, and document sharing, it’s really something else: Google Wave could be the Twitter that everyone really wants. Maybe it’s the Facebook, too.”

 Many Bloggers say Google Wave is more like creating a bunch of independent online social networks that are based on a marriage of email and instant messaging.

Writing a Wave is similar to typing text into Gmail, Google Docs, or a blog. A Wave acts like an instant message, except that other Wave participants see each character as it’s typed. A Wave is equal parts conversation and document, allowing people to communicate and work together quickly at any time with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

 Watch the Google Wave “first look” video from early 2009

How do I sign up for Google Wave? You have to wait til late 2009 when it’s launched.

1. Rich Media: Faster downloads, greater memory and processing speed will enable increased use of rich media advertising to iPhone users. Since the new iPhone announcement in March, some agencies have already experienced a 20% increase in iPhone advertising inquiries.
2. Geo-targeted Ads: the new Safari browser will have location-based technology, allowing marketers to develop geo-targeted ads for iPhone users (assuming the user gives permission to the website to see his/her location). Marketers will be able to serve ads that offer promotions based on a user’s proximity to a store or event. Watch for interactivity that allows users to be led by their phone’s map and new digital compass feature directly to points of sale, events or special deals around town.
3. Mobile Video: A better camera (hooray!) plus new video editing and recording features will allow iPhone users to upload video clips directly to YouTube, share via sms or email. Watch for marketing ideas revolving around encouraging users to record a video of themselves or others and submitting it to enter a contest, to build relationship with a brand, to receive a discounts.
4. Auto Fill: The new auto-fill fuction will remember user’s passwords, name, email much like we are presently used to with desktop browsers. Auto-fill will potentially increase conversion rates and make it easier for iPhone users to sign on to membership areas, subscribe to email newsletters and enter contests.

What do you think? Will the new iPhone 3GS help usher in the new mobile video era and spark a revolution in iPhone advertising & marketing?

Growing numbers of individuals, small businesses, corporations and non profit organizations are jumping onto the Twitter bandwagon. Those who will find the most success will take the time to consider how they can use Twitter to their strategic advantage. Here’s a few suggestions how to make the most of Twitter for your marketing & PR:

Marketing & Advertising

Follow customers & future potential customers. Integrate your online and offline marketing &
advertising messages with your Tweets. Provide links to promotions, microsites, videos,
advertisements.

Reputation Management

Follow experts, industry leaders, news & media. Develop a reputation as an authority in your industry or niche. Open dialogue with others in your or related industries.

Events

Follow individuals or groups interested in your events. Provide event notifications, reminders,
twitter-based event discounts, updates, photos, videos, articles. Tweet live from events. Encourage attendees to tweet during and after about the event. Dialogue live with attendees.

Promotions

Follow customers & future potential customers, offering twitter-user-only deals and promotions as incentives to follow you on Twitter. Provide links to online deals or twitter coupons, discount codes
time-based promotions. Interact with your followers & aim reach a large audience through word of mouth & viral retweeting.

Crisis & Issues Management

Monitor your brand, products, name(s), and issues related to your business or organization. Provide relevant information to address customer needs such as company info, tips, frequently asked questions. Dialogue with followers about the issues, encourage them to get involved and to retweet your posts.

PR & Customer Relations

Follow customers, future potential customers. Create content directly related and relevant to your target audience. Engage customers by asking them questions. Answer questions. Build positive sentiment about your brand.

What do you think?: How have you used or seen Twitter used to help achieve (or hinder) an organizations marketing & PR goals?

photo: kimba

TwtQpon lets you create coupons for promoting your products or services and then post them in your Twitter feed as part of your. If you have products or services you want to promote to your Twitter followers, consider offering a small discount or incentive in the form of a coupon and take advantage of the viral / retweeting features of Twitter.  TwtQpon says: ” Enhance your social media marketing by offering discounted coupons to the Twitter-sphere!”

See a sample Twitter coupon here: http://twtqpon.com/cbm8zk

WordTwit is a Wordpress plugin that utilizes the Twitter API to automatically push a published post to your Twitter account as a tweet. It allows all your Twitter contacts to keep up to date with your blog postings. One cool feature of WordTwit is that you can assign your own shortened url instead of using tinyurl.com or bit.ly or others. This way you get to build your own brand instead of someone else’s. In our case TwitterMarketingAgency.com is way too long of a domain to use, so instead we use http://www.stirbuzz.com. It’s not the shortest domain around, but it serves our needs of building our parent company’s “stir” brand. We are just kicking the tires on this baby, so will let you know how it goes.

bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through our website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck. A more full list of third party tools can be found on the bit.ly blog. Unique user-level and aggregate links are created, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location and metadata. Tracking stats are available after users shorten their long links with bit.ly by clicking on the “Info+” link on bit.ly, or just adding a “+” sign to the end of any bit.ly link (for example, http://bit.ly/n0og+).
Read full bit.ly article on NYTimes