Is your small business on Twitter. If you haven’t yet taken to Twitter Time, chances are your competition has – but how 
do you create a Twitter marketing campaign for your small business that doesn’t leave you overwhelmed with work and underwhelmed when it comes to getting results.
Twitter is a great FREE way to build brand awareness for your company or small business. Twitter will help to up your brand’s mentions and keep your brand top of mind with customers BUT to maximize your effectiveness and reach you must have a smart marketing plan.
Let’s go through the 7 steps you’ll need to take to create and implement an effective twitter marketing campaign for your small business.
Step 1: Know Your Brand
Before you can introduce your brand to others, you’ve got to know your business inside and out! Ask yourself just how well do you know your brand?
- What’s your company’s message?
- What’s your vision?
- What are your core values?
- Why do you do what you do?
- What’s your company culture?
- What value does your company bring?
- Who is your target audience?
Always start with Why. When you know exactly why you’ve built your business and how it can help others the achieving your goals becomes much easier.
Step 2: Become An Expert
Twitter is a great platform for demonstrating your expertise in a specific niche and establishing yourself as the go-to resource in your industry. This means you have to know your business, know your industry and know your target market.
For example, Wine Enthusiast Gary Vaynerchuck built an online empire by first starting a daily video podcast, and then using tools like Twitter and Facebook to engage with his audience and share his passion.
Step 3: Build An Audience
Before you can use Twitter to increase profits, you’ll need to build an engaged audience of followers.
Make it a habit to search and follow 20 Leaders on Twitter Per Day. Here are two FREE methods that you can use to find industry leaders.
You can search company name, twitter username or keyword and easily find 20 people in your industry you can follow.
Step 4: Promotions and Specials
You’re building an audience, now it’s time to start offering specials and promotions to followers, and finding unique ways to showcase your brand using Hashtags and catch phrases.
You can run contests, offer discounts on your own products or services, or simply give recognition to increase awareness and follower participation. Get creative.
Step 5: Break The Mold
A great way to increase revenue through Twitter is to spotlight what differentiates you from your competition – particularly when it links directly back to sales. What makes your company unique? How can your company use Twitter and other social media networks in creative ways to build credibility, exposure and buzz?
Make your Twitter followers feel special by offering promotional deals and discounts exclusive to your Twitter followers.
Step 6: Be Consistent
What makes social media work is consistency and like any other legitimate marketing effort, it takes time to build a raving community of customers, followers and fans that promote your business and brand on your behalf.
The most important aspect of social media is paying attention to what your potential clients and customers want. If you can provide for them products, services, and solutions that make their life easier you’ll have a loyal fan for life.
Step 7: Use Smart Tools
Implement tools that not only make your social media engagement easier but saves you time in the process. Your goal as a business owner is to make money and the more efficient and productive you are the more you can focus on things that matter.
Take a few minutes a week to pre-schedule your updates for the week, but also make sure to set aside time to reply, respond and engage your community. Nothing is worse that posting an update then not being around to respond to comments, questions and feedback.
Remember, tools are great but real connection is what makes social media work.
Time to get your Tweet on!
Want More Twitter Marketing Tips and Strategy To Boost Leads, Customers and Sales For Your Small Business? Get With The Go Guide and Join thousands of solo-entrepreneurs & small business owners upping their business game each week!
Ever wonder how some people on get a flash-flood of retweets, while others can’t even manage a trickle? Are you one of those online marketers that want more Twitter traffic?
Twitter is at the top of the social media madhouse, being one of the top 10 sites on the planet. I mean really, we can all use more Twitter traffic right?
The fact is the more Twitter action you get the more social media clout you have…and we can all use more clout!
One of the best ways to Twitter domination is through retweets.
Ok so what is a retweet?: If you like a tweet, share it by retweeting it.
Twitter’s Retweet feature helps you and share a Tweet you like with all of your followers with one click of a button.
So we know what a retweet is, but what does it really take to get more retweets?
Let me give you a quick heads up…It takes more than great content and Twitter buttons on your site.
Mastering the retweet is a science…and I am going to show you how you 10 ways you can get more retweets.
Oooh!! You’re feeling warm and fuzzy already….I know!
So let’s get started.
# 1 Place retweet buttons within your blog posts
Ok, so I just told you that Twitter buttons on your blog is not going to cut it alone. Try being more direct by telling your reader exactly what you want them to tweet within your post. Use sites like Click to Tweet to add a tweet link next to the text you want your readers to retweet.
Here’s how it works…
Say you want to encourage your readers to retweet a quote or business tip.
- Copy the original tweet posted on your Twitter feed.
- Go to Click to Tweet and paste the message you want to share in the box.
- Click the “Generate” button to create a custom link.
- Copy the link.
- You can write something like “time is money” [tweet] in your blog post creating a hyperlink for [tweet]
Now, whoever clicks on the link [tweet] will have the message automatically added to their Twitter status box, then they simply click to tweet!
How sweet is that!!!
Look, don’t be scared to put retweet links in your content, especially when you have a coo quote, tips or phrase that you know people are going to like. This strategy has worked pretty well on site like Quicksprout.
#2 Build relationships
Social Media Networking is all about relationships. Not status updates and posting quotes. Each week I use the “Power of 5″ and try to connect with a minimum of 5 Twitter users that have a large Twitter following. And when I mean larger, I’m talking about more than 20,000 followers. I send them a direct message, connect with them on Facebook, retweet some of their content, or email them directly.
This is a strategy similar to the one I use on Facebook to connect with influencers. Over time your relationship with the “cool kids” of social media will grow. You’ll see that they may start to retweet some of your tweets too which is super cool because they have tons of followers. So you are guaranteed to get a few retweets out of it.
If you can build relationships with enough influencers within your niche or industry, you’ll have your tweets being shot out to tens of thousands of followers by multiple industry leaders and your numbers will skyrocket!
#3 Know The Words That Are Least Tweetable
Not all words are create equal in Twitterland. Twitter guru, Dan Zarrella analyzed over 30 million retweets from his database, comparing them to a sample of over 2 million random Tweets and found the most common words that occurred far more often in non-ReTweets. Here is a list of those words you want to steer clear of:
game, going, lol, haha, watching, work, but, home, night, bed, well, tired, sleep, gonna, hey, tomorrow, tired, some, back, bored, listening.
#4 Learn What Your Readers Want To Read
For some of you sending out random tweets is the norm, but if you really take a look at what master Twitter users do you’ll want to slap yourself for not using common sense. While so blatantly obvious, tweeting about something that people actually want to read, is so easily overlooked. If you want to get more retweets on Twitter, you’ll want to spend time educating yourself about what exactly it is your network or target market responds to.
#5 Use The Tweet Exchange
If your goal is to gain more retweets, why not give your readers something of value in exchange for a retweet. Have a guide, ebook, audio, or webinar? Let your readers know they can get FREE access to your goodies when they retweet your content. And as your readers are retweeting your content you’ll find you’ll get more download and visitors funneling back to your site. Definitely a win-win
# 6 Follow The Trends
Make sure you are paying attention to the trending topics and hashtags. There are anywhere from 2 to 4 million tweets that include hashtags. Pay attention to the popular hashtags…if you do you can get your tweets seen by more people, which will naturally lead to more retweets.
Here are a few cools ways to find out what’s trending on Twitter:
- Check out Trendistic: For those who like visual data Trendistic gives you a graphical interface to see trends and keywords on Twitter. Trendistic will list the hot trends over the last 24 hours, 7 days, and month as well as provide embeddable charts and the ability to compare trends.
- Do a Twitter Search: Want to see Twitter trends, go to Twitter. By going to the sites official search page or homepage you can see all of the hot trends site. Want to see the conversation feed for those trends, just click on the word.
- Monitter: This is an unassuming site that turns out to be one of the best ways to track trends in real-time. Simply type in the keywords and it will automatically update with the most recent tweets containing those terms. Add or remove columns to give you the right amount of information. It also allows you to narrow the search to a particular geographic location, allowing you to find out what’s going on in a particular part of the world.
- Tweetmeme: Looking for the hottest links on Twitter? Tweetmeme can help you with that.
- Hashtags.org: This is a simple but pretty popular site that tracks Twitter hashtags. What’s a hashtag: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keyword or topic in a Tweet. Any Twitter user can categorize or follow topics with hashtags. This webpage on Twitter hashtags also provides graphs on hashtag activity.
# 7 Memorize Your Personal Tweet Number
Leave enough space to allow people to retweet your content easily. Twitter gives you 140 characters but if you use up all of the space and people have to edit your long tweet just to be able to retweet you, most people are just too lazy to bother. So it’s worth memorizing your Magic Retweet Number. But if you’re lazy too, just remember to make your tweets between 120 – 130 words.
# 8 Don’t dumb it down
Use proper English, correct spelling and take the time to really craft your tweets. Tweets with more complex and “smart” words tend to get retweeted at a higher rate so leave the text shorthand (LOLs and the likes) for your iPhone.
# 9 Be Careful With The Automation
Automation makes our life easy, but too much of anything is pad for you, including automated tweets. Is it ok to pre-schedule tweets in advance. Absolutely! but at the same time you want to make sure your voice is what’s really attracting people to you. make sure your content comes across real, authentic and organic. If you must use services like Tweetadder or Twitterfeed, make sure you review everything before it goes out.
New Breed Entrepreneur Tip: Remember – your brand is all you have online. And you want to have a strong brand, that has it’s own unique voice. Take care in the content you put out in to Internetland. Do everything with excellence in mind. It will pay off and you’ll have people retweeting, sharing and liking your content in droves.
#10 Be Consistent
Just like anything else you want to master in life, you have to be consistent and you have to do the work. That means giving people content that is worthy of being retweeted not some of the time but all the time. If people don’t know what to expect from you, they won’t feel comfortable putting their reputation on the line by sharing “bad” content. So make sure you always give people a reason to feel good about sharing your content with their own network.
Want More Social Media Tips? Check out The Go Guide (it’s Free) for weekly updates on growing your business with social media.
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Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in touch with friends and industry peers you know. It has quickly become one of the most popular social networking sites ever. With over 75 millions users sending 50 million tweets a day (yeah that’s like 600 tweets a second), Twitter has become the playground of choice for celebrities, corporate businesses, public figures and even the President. Yes, you can find them all on Twitter.
With Twitter you are able to access a rich source of instant information. You can stay updated with “real time” events going on anywhere in the world, and keep others updated on what’s going on in your world too. So you can see how this social media phenomenon is one of the HOTTEST places online. 
Twitter can be a powerful tool and if you are looking to create some serious wealth online and build a list of dedicated followers, you absolutely HAVE TO be on Twitter. Twitter should without a doubt be towards the very top of your social media priority list.
So here is a Step By Step Guide for Conquering Twitter:
——
Twitter Basics
Ok, so if you had no idea what Twitter was before this post, we’ll excuse you, maybe you’ve been hiding under a rock or something!
1. To sign up for a Twitter account. Go to http://twitter.com and click on “Sign-Up.” Fill in the information, click create my account and viola – you have your own Twitter account. There are tutorials and guides for newbies but once you start using it you’ll get the hang of posting tweets in no time.
2. Set up your profile. There are a few free Twitter backgrounds such as http://twitbacks.com or http://www.mytweetspace.com that you can download or you can stick with the ones Twitter gives you to choose from. You can change these “settings.” Be creative but real when generating your bio and make sure to include your website link, preferably a blog link. You’ll also want to upload a current and professional photo of yourself.
3. Start Building Your Network. Twitter will allow you to import email lists, contacts and you can find friends and business associates on their search engine. The best way to build a list of interesting people is to go to the Twitter search engine at http://search.twitter.com and plug in your interests. This will then spit tons of people back out at you that you can choose to follow. Twitter will also give you some suggestions for people to follow
Take advantage of another fabulous Twitter tool, which is FREE to set up, by going to http://socialoomph.com. This will allow you to send automated welcome messages to new followers and create settings that will automatically follow those who follow you or ‘unfollow’ those who do not follow you.
“Following’ someone is the same as adding them as a facebook friend, except they don;t see your updates unless they choose to follow you as well. Once you start following someones, their tweets will appear in your “timeline” or your Twitter feed.
4. How To Get More Followers. Another powerful tool that is not FREE, but highly recommended is http://www.livelybrowser.com. Go here to purchase the Twitter Friend Adder for $50. This is a simple and easy tool you can use to automatically add Twitter friends. If you’re on a budget, just add friends manually by finding others in your same niche.
In addition to search.twitter.com here are two more awesome tools you can use to help you find other like-minded people to network with:
5. Not Getting Followed Back? If you find that people you are following are not following you back, you can manually unfollow those who don’t follow you with this free tool: http://dossy.org/twitter/karma (If you buy the Twitter Friend Adder, from www.livelybrowser.com this feature is included). Basically, it’s a Flash application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you quickly paginate through them.
Simple Rules to a Flourishing Twitter Following:
1. Tweet From The Heart
Make sure that your tweets are always coming from a place of honesty and transparency. Put real emotion in your tweets and your followers will stay with you. If you don’t treat Twitter as a more personal experience and spam it with sales messages, you will get unfollowed very quickly.
2. Tweet Value
Find good content to share with others. Share helpful tips for your industry that don;t have to do with your followers buying your product. Do not spam your link… Success on Twitter depends on your ability to share valuable content and information with your network, things that they can take away from the conversation and use; They will recommend you to friends and you will generate tweet that will encourage new people to follow you.
3. Tweet Often Tweet Regularly and Tweet during Peak Time, aiming for a few tweets a day.If you have something of value to offer online such as videos or quotes, a blog or a website, share updates that you make to it or new postings that you have written.
You can also re-syndicate content you like from other people. http://popurls.com and http://digg.com are excellent places to find content. Give away free Stuff. Have an e-book or a free course? Give away to anyone who follows your tweets or give you their e-mail address.
4. Interact With The Twitter Community It’s not enough to simply add friends, you must interact with them. use direct message and @reply to interact personally with your friends. Retweet other user’s tweets when you think they are relevant or you can help them out. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and you’ll find you’ll become a vlaued member.
5. Here are some other fun and useful Twitter tools:
Cheers!! Now you’re on your way to Twitter domination! This is a quick step by step guide to ultimate Twitter success. There are many other Twitter tools out there you can use, but what I’ve laid out for you here are the the ones I find to be most valuable! If you think someone else could benefit from this information please feel free to retweet or share he link with a colleague or two. Feedback is always welcome wo make sure you leave a comment if something is one your mind! I’d love to hear it!
Success Is By Design Not By Accident
Your Internet Success & Network Marketing Lifestyle Coach
310.877.1481
Skype: andrea.bolder
Pssst!! Hey You. Step Into My Office! Are you tired of struggling and losing money in your business? If you are determined to find a step by step solution to all of your network marketing problems and ready to start generating some significant income from home, then it’s time get with the program. NO MORE EXCUSES! Discover my step by step formula to generating FREE leads, signing up more reps and exploding your business while on auto-pilot using social network marketing. If you are ready to get busy, CLICK HERE RIGHT NOW! ======> I Want That Step By Step Formula!
