We get a lot of questions about Twitter.  Should I use it? How can I use it?  Are there directions for using it?  With Twitter being such a new technology, it is evolving quickly.  It is one of those technologies that is breaking ground so rapidly that what you learn today, is not entirely correct tomorrow.  Twitter has gone from a tweeny tech toy, to a mainstream media disruptor in less than 12 months.  It has turned information distribution into a free service and empowered millions to connect and follow anyone with similar interests.

So now the big question: how can you use it for your business?  This is a bit more complex as it requires you to abandon everything that you have known about traditional marketing.  On Twitter, and honestly throughout the entire online social movement, you can’t simply place billboards along the way and hope that people find them attractive enough to stop in to your store and buy something.  Sure, everything is just a click away, but the percentages of successful click to buy ratios from display ads are diminishing every day.

The trick with social networking and Twitter is the power of recommendations.  Nobody will argue that word of mouth marketing is by far the most effective and cost effective marketing on the planet.  Social networking tools like Twitter give users the ability to search for information across the entire user-base and target only the recommendations they want. Recent Twitter inventions like trends and lists are ushering in a new era in spontaneous information distribution.

Example: When news broke recently about a certain celebrity that had been taken to the hospital from his LA home, users jumped to new media outlets like Twitter first and they were greeted with the most up to date information on the situation.  Traditional news outlets such as CNN were all scrambling to get information, but those that were already on the scene, or near the scene, were busy making posts to Twitter.  That information was being forwarded and forwarded to millions of users within seconds.  The trends showed the #1 topic to be Michael Jackson, even before CNN released the name of the “person that was taken to the hospital” on TV.  Within an hour, Twitter users were reporting an overdose and that he had passed away.  CNN shortly after that started quoting Twitter as a “source”, essentially throwing in the towel in the race for new media distribution.

Using this example to power your marketing

As the example above demonstrates, people are no longer sticking to their TVs for their important information.  Today, people are able to choose who they listen to, or “follow”.  These groups become their source for information.  New people are added to this group of personal sources all the time and when one of them indicates that they like something or find value in it, they re-broadcast it so that others will know about it.

You want to place your marketing seamlessly in this stream.  This gives you the viral effect of distribution, combined with the added value of a recommendation.  Your marketing takes on a new level of value when delivered by an independent source.

Here at ASA, we have hundreds of techniques to hook into this social stream and drop your marketing message at key times.  Some of them include:

• Create a Twitter profile and establish it as the best source for information on any topic.  Over time, people will start to follow your new profile once they know that it is providing great information about that topic.  This topic does not need to be anything about your business, only something of interest to others.
• Another option for businesses is to approach twitter users with large follower bases and provide them with free samples of merchandise.  We have seen a huge response from users writing tweets about something that was given to them for a trial and they liked it.  One sports personality was given some Oakley shades and really liked them.  Oakley sold out of the particular model within 72 hours of that broadcast.

There are literally thousands of methods to harness this ever popular and growing service in order to bring your marketing message to the masses.  ASA can help you get there with the fastest time to market and lowest cost to implement.  Find out more by contacting us today.