Twitter and Marketing

"Why does listening to your customer sound like a Web 2.0 idea? It should be a business 1.0 necessity" 

Jeff Jarvis

To be very true, my twitter experience is not a very good one, if I recollect back to the past incidents. First of all I didn't know that when I send a tweet everybody gets it. And it was somewhat awkward. But Twitter, when you are really familiar with it, is an immensely useful platform as marketers as it is mainly about conversing or microblogging. Why I say that is, because as I've emphasized in my previous blog posts and as of the universal truth, social media marketing is all about being part of the conversation and not just increasing your facebook likes or twitter follower count. In twitter as tweets are essentially short, it becomes more close to a conversation than in other platforms which is also called the 'SMS of the internet'. So what more can it be for marketers than a great opportunity to engage with customers through regular tweets.

As I was inspired by the book, 'Engage' by Brian Solis I will share here the knowledge I gathered from that book as it mentioned tips for twitter for socially savvy business, which is exactly what we are talking here, along with examples.

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• Special offers- As we all know, every body, even in social media are fighting for our attention. So for a tweet to be picked it has to be ridiculously attractive.Through offers and coupon issues, companies not only engage more with the customers, but also earn a great ROI through increased revenues. Figure 1 is a caption of Dell's twitter page which highlights offers.
• Ordering- Why not order through twitter. Twitter can be used to take and prepare orders and that do result in huge revenues and cost savings for companies who are already practicing it. 
• Word of mouth marketing- To mark an important event like maybe 'mother's day,' a company can organize a tweet competition where the audience is required to use a certain hash tag and tweet about the topic. The traffic created may increase rapidly and also will provide SEO benefits to land on top results on search.
• Customer Service- Figure 2 is an example for companies that do direct answering to specific questions directed at them. Isn't it amazing how efficient it can be,other than filing a complaint and wondering if it ever reached the company.
• Focus groups- If any company needs to know what their customers are thinking about, twitter is the place to see it all. Professionals of two companies had this to say about the gold mine of information twitter can produce:

"There is a major element of Twitter that's about listening and learning. Twitter is a leading indicator"

" Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine. We watch for customers' discussions about amenities we have, and what they'd like to see made better"

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• Business Development- As people do not hesitate to criticize a brand on Twitter, companies can always see where they are going wrong and also where their competitors are going wrong. So in other words it is a money saver as the formalized researches are no more needed.
• Information networks- The ability of networking is something we shouldn't forget. For example some companies use twitter to inform flight delays, traffic alerts, road closures etc... Twitter is also a good platform for job seekers as shown in figure 3.
• Dedicated and branded channels- As twitter also has all kinds of general information,companies like Ford has taken steps to create different twitter accounts relating to customer interests. According to a professional 'We give customers a choice as to how they want to consume information'. Figure 4 and 5 are witnesses for that where the @forddrive-green is dedicated for sustainability driven customers and @fordmustang is dedicated for mustang fans.
• User-generated change- We see social media at the roots of many individual driven political revolutions at present, which means even through twitter we can go out to the world with our requests.  Twitition and TinyPetition are witnesses for that.
• Ideation- Twitter is also a great place to encourage new ideas. Figure 6 is an example of IBM using twitter for idea generation.
• Events- Twitter can be used to inform and gather large crowds for events through a simple invitation.
• Fund Raising- Twitter can also be used to raise funds for worthy causes through gaining awareness.

Above is a list of how Twitter can be used in a beneficial way for the company, the customer and to the society at large.