Top Ten Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing
Copyright (c) 2009 Jason OConnor
The Net Gazette
http://www.TheNetGazette.net/

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that asks you a basic question,
“What are you doing?” It allows anyone with an account to write
up to 140 characters in a text field as a means to update,
comment, promote or communicate to others who are “following”
you. When people follow you, they see what you’ve recently
contributed when they login. They see your “tweets”, which are
the messages you leave.

And of course you can follow others who tweet about the things
that interest you. As an Internet marketer you may want to follow
other Internet marketers, for example.

Like anything, and this is especially true of working with social
media, the more you give, the more you get. In other words, the
more often you tweet the more activity you’ll generate. Some
suggest that you tweet a few times a day, every day. Not every
tweet needs to be profound. But they should all be useful.

It’s important that you don’t abuse Twitter for marketing and
promoting your products, services or affiliate links. Most of
your tweets ought to be about offering your followers useful and
valuable information. Only once in a while should you try to use
Twitter to promote something. Otherwise you’ll be perceived as a
spammer, and no one wants that tag.

Imagine if you had a large number of people following your
tweets? Some people have tens of thousands following them. If you
had something to promote and you had a large following, you could
quickly and efficiently alert a lot of people of your promotion.
It acts sort of like an opt-in mass emailing blast to your house
email list, but it’s a heck of a lot easier and faster. This is
the power of Twitter.

One thing that I’ve noticed with Twitter is that it can seem
overwhelming at times. The sheer information on Twitter, the
‘how-to’s', tutorials and all the other ubiquitous advice on
how to use and take advantage of it can seem hard to understand
and implement. So here’s an easy-to-understand list of the top
ten ways in which you can use Twitter to market yourself, your
business and your website.

The Top 10 Ways To Use Twitter for Marketing:

1. Use it to promote new pieces of content you or your company
create to drive traffic to your site. From online articles to
blog posts or from videos to webinars, each time you add
something to the Web that is of value, tweet about it and include
a link. (Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a
long URL and make it short.)

2. Use it for learning new marketing ideas, strategies and
techniques. If you follow the right people, and you have to be
picky about who you follow, you’ll get pointed to a good amount
of useful tutorials, videos, e-zines and other things that teach
you about marketing.

3. Use it to get new customers. Use Twitter’s search to find
people who may be interested in your product or service. There
are many ingenious ways to search for people on Twitter. For
example, if you sell red widgets you could go to
http://search.twitter.com and find people who have tweeted
specifically looking for red widgets. To do this, type the
following into the search box: red widgets?

* You’ll notice a lot of the results will be of others selling
red widgets. These ones will all obviously have links in them to
direct people to the site they’re selling red widgets on. To
weed these people/tweets out, use the negative sign like this:
-http red widgets?

* Since every link has ‘http’ in it, using the negative sign
in front of it will cause your search results to not include any
tweets with links in them.

4. Use it to build your email list. Use Twitter’s search to find
people who may be interested in the monthly newsletter you send
out to your opt-in house email list. Invite these people to join.

5. Utilize Twitter plugins or add-ons such as TweetMyBlog or The
Twitter Updater, which both automatically make tweets of every
new blog post you publish. Also check out TwitThis. When visitors
to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes
the URL of the Web page and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL.
Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of
the web page to all of their followers on Twitter. Finally, look
at TweetLater, a service that allows you to write lots of tweets
at once and then schedule them to go out over time.

6. Use it to build buzz about an upcoming product or website
launch.

7. Use it to better brand yourself or your business. Remember,
when someone wants to learn more about you or your company, they
are increasingly using sites like Twitter for research. You could
easily use Twitter to establish yourself as an authority in your
field.

8. Use it to update followers on breaking news regarding your
company. If your company is mentioned in a new article, tweet
about it and include a link to the article. Or if you’re at a
conference or trade show, you could tweet what you’re doing and
invite people to visit you in person.

9. Use it for business networking, master-mind groups (see
Napoleon Hill), and getting yourself seen by high-profile people
in your industry.

10. Use it as an instant messaging system to keep your and your
team on the same page during projects. This is especially useful
for those who work with teams spread out in different cities or
countries.

You should note that this top 10 list is not in order of
importance or in any particular order. I suggest that you give
Twitter a try if you haven’t already. See if you can apply a few
of these techniques and tactics to help you take advantage of
Twitter as a marketing tool.

And one more important thing to remember is that there is no
silver bullet in marketing. You should always be trying and
implementing numerous tactics when marketing your business.
Don’t only rely on Twitter or any other one thing. Instead, use
Twitter (or any other Web 2.0 site) as simply one more tool in
your entire social media and marketing toolbox.

Copyright 2009 TheNetGazette.net

———————————————————-
Jason OConnor is an Web consultant http://www.jasonoconnor.com/
He writes for The Net Gazette, a Web marketing newsletter
(http://www.thenetgazette.net/), and owns Oak Web Works, LLC, a
Web design and marketing company at http://www.oakwebworks.com/

Sincerity: the ‘Secret Sauce’ for Effective Marketing
Copyright (c) 2009 Judy Murdoch
Highly Contagious Marketing
http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm

A couple years ago, I was talking with someone who was, for me, a
very challenging client. I’m all about cultivating relationships
that result in opportunities to sell.

This particular client seemed allergic to cultivating
relationships for reasons I never really understood.

I remember one such meeting, I was trying to explain to my client
the wisdom of first creating trust and credibility before trying
to get a sale. And my client was blocking me at every turn with
reasons why relationship development would not work for their
business.

It was maddening.

Finally, I cried with exasperation, “Well, why the heck do you
want to keep working with me since my approach doesn’t work for
you?”

“Because you’re sincere,” the client replied.

“Who cares” I thought to myself since it didn’t seem to be to
helping my client grow their business.

Since that time I’ve changed me mind about the quality of
sincerity. I think it’s impossible to have sustainably effective
marketing without sincerity.

===============================
The Importance of Being Sincere
===============================

The word, “sincere” is derived from the Latin word,
“sincerus,” meaning whole, pure, genuine.

When you think about today’s business climate, sincerity isn’t
a quality that comes to mind. But it’s a quality human beings
need to perceive to be willing and able to buy.

==============================================
The Place of Sincerity in Your Marketing
==============================================

First, it’s important to remember the real role of marketing in
your business.

Marketing is NOT about making a sale. Marketing is about creating
a relationship based in trust and safety so that a sale can
occur.

Regardless of public sentiment towards business, people and
companies still have problems that need to be solved and stuff
that has to get done. Your prospective customers still need to
buy stuff.

They want to be able to trust you because they need to buy what
you sell.

The marketing you do is all about establishing visibility and
credibility so that there’s enough trust for the purchase to
happen.

For example, if you regularly keep in touch with prospects via an
ezine, you’re not doing it to “bug” your customers. You’re
sending out that ezine because:

* You can remind them that “Hey, I help people just like you
solve these kinds of problems.”

* You can offer examples and helpful information about the kind
of problems you solve (“Here’s an example of how I helped a
customer”)

* Or you provide helpful information for your prospects to
better understand what they need to do to improve their
situation.

Once prospective customers feel accepted for where they’re at
and trust you can actually help, they can then take the next
step.

==============================================
It’s About Sustainable, Effective Marketing
==============================================

Now there are also some relatively good-hearted entrepreneurs out
there who use hard-sell tactics in their marketing. You subscribe
to their ezine and get barraged with multiple emails every day
telling you about some amazing program you “just gotta check
out.”

Here’s what’s important: there is no rest with this kind of
marketing. You must work very, very hard to generate this level
of noise.

And if you’re spending so much time and energy with your own
marketing, it’s tough to put much time or effort into where–in
my opinion–we should be making the difference: helping clients
and customers get results.

That, to me, is why hype-centered marketing with or without a
good heart fails. If you want to market your business in a way
that brings in a steady stream of ideal customers without burning
yourself into a crispy critter, sincere, heart-centered marketing
is the way to go.

==============================================
Keys to Developing Sincere, Effective, Sustainable Marketing
==============================================

#1. Ask yourself, “what’s my highest intention for my
business?”

What’s the best possible outcome for you, for your business, and
for your customer?

Example: the highest intention for Highly Contagious Marketing is
when we help clients create marketing that grows their client
base and their bottom line.

When that happens, satisfied clients send us referrals which
helps Highly Contagious Marketing succeed financially and there
are more successful businesses in the world making a positive
difference.

#2. Look at how your intention is reflected in your marketing?

Thinking of the many different ways you market your business, how
is your intention showing up?

Example: In all the activities to promote Highly Contagious
Marketing, I want to:

(1.) Provide information, a how-to, or a resource that gives the
person who gets the marketing a little added value

(2.) Provide an offer and a clear call to action for anyone
wanting to take the next step and get more help from us.

#3. Ask what one change can you make to your marketing to express
your sincere desire to serve customers and make a difference?

Some specific actions you can take to show more sincerity in your
marketing include:

(1.) Make your marketing message truly focused on your customer
and their current problem. The first half of your message should
be about your customer and their situation. If you’re talking
about yourself–your solutions and qualifications, your marketing
is not focused on the customer.

(2.) Look for ways to leave anyone who encounters your marketing
a little better off than they were before the encounter.
Marketing that informs, coaches, inspires, even entertains all
leave recipients a little better off.

(3.) Make sure your marketing reflects your values and if not,
make changes. If you loathe hype in other marketing but use hype
because “that’s what everyone says I have to do,” stop using
hype. Create marketing that gets results without making you feel
like you sold your soul.

==============================================
Bottom Line
==============================================

Remember, marketing is all about cultivating trust-based
relationships so prospects can buy. And sincerity is a critical
factor which enables trust to grow.

Can you market your products and services without sincerity?
Sure. But you will have to work a lot harder to sustain sales
because you won’t be creating the quality relationships that
give your marketing real momentum.

To create marketing in which sincerity shines through, take some
time to remember what your business is in service for and take
action so that your marketing better reflects what matters to
you.

———————————————————-
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost,
effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals,
guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances.
To download a free copy of the workbook, “Where Does it Hurt?
Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers
Crazy!” go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com