To coincide with the online publication of “85 Ways to Market your Small Business” – a book about how to market small business – HowTo.co.uk takes a look at what you can do to get you back into work.
With users ranging from A-list celebrities to up and coming bands, twitter is the marketing flavour of the month on the tip of everyone’s tongue. But what is it, what does it do and how can it help you market small business?
Twitter is a mini-blogging tool that allows you to keep your friends, family, colleagues or customers up to date on what’s occurring in your world. The tiny blogs are no more than 140 characters and can be read by anyone subscribed to read (or follow in Twitter parlance) your Tweets – the name for your messages or updates. The service can be read by anyone with the Internet or a mobile phone, as the service allows users to update or be updated via SMS or text message.
There are a range of applications that Twitter can make to marketing or promoting a business. Some of the benefits of Twitter are:
· Keep your customers constantly updated with the latest news about your products or services. Share exclusive information with the customers who follow your Tweets.
· Search publicly readable Twitter messages for references to your brand. You can also look for Keywords that are associated with your product or service and see how many hits each word gets from Twitterers using a tool called TweetVolume.
This service can be used to compare how your brand name competes with your competitors in terms of the number of times it was mentioned on Twitter.
· Twitter works both ways, so you can receive reliable feedback on your products, services or any aspect of the sale from your customers directly.
· Following on from feedback is market research. You can send out a simple question to your current established customer base and get thousands of instant one-word answers. Asking ‘Was the latest XXX CD a hit or a miss?’ will get you potentially hundreds of thousand of replies. This allows you to see precisely what your present customers think.
· You can set up a campaign of messages that will be sent at scheduled intervals. That way you don’t need someone attached to a computer day and night.
· You can create an Internet buzz around a particular brand launch. Anyone interested can get news about how to be at the product launch.
· You can use Twitter to improve your company’s online reputation. Read your supporter’s words and analyze your critics. This will allow you to look at why people might or might not buy what you have to offer.
· You can advertise discounts that are available on your products or services for that day only. Write in a discount code and wait for the customers to come to you.
Twitter is a revolutionary way of messaging thousands of people at once and instantly receiving messages back. Its applications for marketing are still in their early days, yet hundreds of businesses in the UK are already using Twitter to keep in contact with their customers. Use your business name in the set up of your Twitter name and profile and your customers will be able to find you when they do a search for it on Twitter.
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