How Twitter Can Help Online Marketing and Tips

Twitter has been around and popular in the U.S. for more than a year with millions of users. The iPhone is coming to Canada in a few weeks and I am sure Twitter will become more mainstream and adopted in Canada. Why? Because the iPhone can host the already popular Twitter application, it can be integrated with your Facebook and your blog, and it is very accessible to input your tweets anywhere, anytime.

More than a year ago, I went to a conference in San Jose and was introduced to Twitter. I was initially not sold on it, nor did I understand why someone would use it. I wasn’t convinced because I didn’t see the relationship and benefits with other social media spheres myself. Recently I integrated it with my Facebook , iPhone and Seed the Web blog and I discovered that it is a great way to get the word out about yourself, company or blog. It is a good medium for expressing yourself and networking with others with common interests. I now see how beneficial it is, if Twitter is fully integrated with other mediums, you can see better results in a whole (synergy).

How I have my Twitter set up:

So what is Twitter?

• It’s a micro blog that allows you to send updates (aka “tweets”) to the Twitter website, similar to the Facebook status (with a limit of 140 character input). People want to tell the world what their likes and dislikes are and what they are doing “right now.”
• It helps you find people with similar interests. You can follow them, and others can follow you.
• It’s an instant-messaging-meets-social-media-networking tool.
• Twitter is one of the most popular applications on the iPhone.

What Twitter can be used for:

• Pull marketing tactic vs. push.
• Quick answers to random questions – you can throw a question out and anyone can answer you.
• Telling others about breaking news within the industry.
• Promoting your company’s name, sharing your blog posts or news.
• Saying weird stuff (with your company’s name mentioned for a subtle plug of course!).

Samples of real-life opportunities:

From my experience so far at Sitemasher, we’ve had potential customers contact us and tell us that they found out about Sitemasher via Twitter. Others have given us feedback that they found us on Facebook, saw the tweets about Sitemasher on our status and clicked through on our blog links to find out more about our website builder/content management platform (CMS). Sitemasher has also seen increases in its blog traffic, Twitter followers and friends requests in Facebook. In the end, it increased the communities that we’re involved with, which can also increase new customer leads as we’re tapping into a larger audience with the same likes.

10 key takeaways to integrate Twitter with other tactics to get better results.

1. Show full transparency and authenticity. Open an account at Twitter.com with a real name – use your name and not an alias, so people can search and follow you. Also, when you use a real name and picture, people will trust you more.
2. Lurk and learn before you leap. Watch how others interact, post links, and ask questions – learn from them.
3. Interact and give value. You can be funny, educational, on-the-know and down-to-earth.


Sample tweets:



4. Have a library of tweets. Make sure you have a bunch of tweets before you really start to find followers, so others can view your tweets and know your personality and the value of your feeds – they’ll make that decision to follow you back or not.
5. Try to follow those who you ultimately want to follow you back. Anytime you “follow” (which is like becoming a friend on other social networks like MySpace, Facebook, or Digg), it sends a notification to that user. And they may follow you.
6. Track and search tweets for key words that you’re interested in. I will go to Google Custom Search (in Beta) or summize.com and search for tweets on topics that I’m interested to or related to my business and start to follow those people. The people I look for are the ones with the same likes/dislikes as mine and those who give great links to tips, new technology services and who also do updates on a continual basis. This is a good way to keep up on your reputation management to see who is twittering about your company, and if it is positive or negative. Also gives you a chance to react and fix situations that may be negative.
   
   
   Sample search on Summize.com:
   
   
   
7. Integrate with other tactics. I discovered that if I integrated Twitter with other social media realms, my reach increases and I save time. I have my Twitter feed automatically update my Facebook status (you need to download the application in Facebook to your profile). I posted my feed on my blog to show visitors what I’m doing or saying at the moment, and I downloaded the Twitter application on my phone, so I can tweet on-the-go.


Sample Twitter feed on blog:




8. Subtly promote your company. Don’t do all business speak – not a hard sell – take your suit off! Start casual conversations with the people you like or have something in common with. Don’t sell them – make acquaintances only. Get familiar with inappropriate spam.
9. Make a commitment. At first you may feel like you’re talking to no one, but you’ll gain followers in no time – don’t get disheartened – nothing good is easy!
10. Advertise your Twitter feed and let people know you are Twitter friendly. They also may find you through Facebook, blog, search results or other advertising medium (business cards, e-mail signature). Insert it on your e-mail signature or even write it on the back of your business cards.
    
    Sample email signature:
    

Additional Twitter reading: Guidance, Tools and Resources at Website Magazine.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

How to Advertise on Facebook to Increase Website Traffic

I tested out Facebook Ads recently and thought it was an effective strategy as well as very easy to set up and maintain. If you ever want to test out online advertising to increase your website traffic and get more customers, I’d recommend starting with Facebook Ads.

Facebook advertising is an effective way to attract targeted customers. That is, if it complements your business and you can segment out your target audience (your ideal customer) within Facebook. Compared to Google, MSN and Yahoo paid advertising, it is more simplistic and less time-consuming. Facebook can be a good way to get your feet wet and test the waters and also be on the forefront of online marketing.

Getting Started
You can set up your Facebook ad campaign within minutes. All you need is your personal Facebook account and a credit card handy. Log in and select on the left-hand side of your profile page “Ads and Pages” and then select the green button “create an Ad”. The wizard will take you through the steps.

First Step – Define Your Landing Page:

If you want to advertise on Facebook to drive traffic to your website, you don’t need a Facebook page or a Facebook group. You can specify the ad when clicked, to go to your URL (i.e., www.sitemasher.com) or alternatively you can link it to your Facebook page or group. You can use a Facebook page as a company microsite, blog, news, or even forum. For my campaign though, I thought it made sense to go directly to our corporate site and not our Facebook group.

Second Step – Choose Your Audience:
Facebook advertising can be filtered by personal profile interests with its advanced targeting feature. For example, I ran an ad to recruit web designers and developers to join our pilot program. I was able to serve the ad to both Canadian and U.S. members who had web design and/or developing stated within their profiles. Since that is our target audience (developers as well as web designers), I was able to really filter who can see our ad and not waste our budget. So anyone who is logged in with those interests may see our ad served on the left-hand side of Facebook.

You can also target by age, gender, and location. Facebook has more than 70 million active users, so it is highly recommended to filter your ad serving unless you have very deep pockets or a product or service that everyone will love.

Third Step – Create Your Ad
Write a short and sweet compelling text ad and title. I recommend having a very concise call to action (i.e, sign up, buy or win) so that your audience gives you the desired results; or if they are not interested, they don’t click on your ad. You have a choice to add a graphic element, which I highly recommend – so that it catches the member’s attention. You can simply use your logo or have a graphic designer create a graphical ad to complement your message/and or campaign. The graphic needs to be a size of 110 by 80 pixels. Sometimes you will see long skyscraper ads in Facebook, but I couldn’t figure out how you can submit one that size. I believe the longer skyscraper ads are being served by a third-party advertising program and not available through this Facebook ad signup process.

Fourth Step – Set Your Budget:
Facebook advertising offers two choices: One is CPC based (cost-per-click – you bid and pay for each click on your ad) and the other is CPM based (cost-per-thousand – you bid and pay for every thousand impressions/views your ad shows up on Facebook). Bidding is how much you are willing to pay for the ad; it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be that – most times, it is less. I bid on the cost-per-clicks; I personally find that CPM is not the most ideal way of controlling a budget or understanding the true value.

It’s important to realize that Facebook advertising will have a lower click-through rate versus Google Ads – so don’t compare it apples to apples. On Facebook, people are not really looking actively for anything specific like they may be on Google Search. They may click on your Facebook ad because they may be interested as it targeted to the profile and they may want to wander off of their profile page.

Also, don’t be disappointed that your click-throughs are low, take a look at the Facebook analytics, your impressions may be high (how many times your ad showed up), which can be good for your brand awareness.

What I think about Facebook Ads

Although I do give Facebook thumbs-up for its ease and profile targeting, I think it does have room for lots of improvement. I think the analytics can use some work, it would be nice as an advertiser to see what key words in the profile promoted the ads, which key words had click-throughs and what were the matching average demographics (i.e. ages and sex) of the profiles that had the ad triggered for their pages. I also find the billing a little quirky; I get billed $15 here and there and it would be nice to have one billing invoice per month and ability to have multiple accounts. It would also be nice if the ad sizes could be longer like the skyscraper ads that are being served within Facebook but somehow are not accessible through Facebook ads.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!