How to use twitter to promote your onlineshop – part 2
In the last article we have asked ourselves a few questions about twitter and if it fits to your product- and marketing environment. Now you might want to have some tips how to use twitter for your marketing/e commerce endeavors. Here you go:
1. Be useful!
There is nothing worse than sending out useless links to products noone was interested in in the first place. This is nothing less than spam, so don’t do it! If you want to use twitter, make your information useful. This means i.e. sending out gift coupon codes which will give your customers 5% off of their next purchase. For one many might retweet your offer due to its usefulness to everyone but it will also give you a great way to track your success on twitter if you use a special keycode.
2. Be helpful!
Listen! Don’t just send out links to everyone who might be following you. Monitor the twitter universe and listen to those who might be interested in your product. How do you do that? Use tools like Tweetdeck to search for keywords related to your products and you might find those who are looking for the exact product you are offering. Imagine your pizza delivery boy knocking on your door right after you said “Wow I could use a pizza right now” while surfing the web in your apartment. How cool would that be? With twitter you can do just that. Actively search for those who are interested in your products and help them with their needs. You won’t regret it.
3. Be personal
Have you ever called your ISP regarding a problem, hoping to talk to a competent CRM guy but got a computer instead, who just couldn’t understand your problem? Don’t be like this computer. Twitter is a communication tool, and we all want to talk to humans, not machines. So engage in communication with your clients, even if it’s not about your products. It will help you in the long run. Zappos is a great example how to do it.
4. Be honest
We all know it - sometimes things happen the wrong way and it might even be our fault. You can deny it…or you can be honest about it. Twitter can be a great tool to respond fast and targeted to problems your customers have. And the best thing is - everyone can read how you handle your customers. If you do it right, this can help your standing in the community. We all are customers, so we all know how we want to be treated by companies. Why not apply this knowledge to your customer service? Independent from what you do, twitter offers you a fast and open platform for your customer relationship management. And the best thing is - it doesn’t cost a cent.
5. Be visible
There is no sense in using twitter if your customers don’t know about it. So add a twitter icon to your site. Give your customers the ability to tweet about products they are interested in. And make it easy for others to follow you. If you have a blog, write about your twitter activities and explain the advantages your users can get from following you.
6. Don’t spam!
There is nothing worse than spam. You don’t like getting spamed with messages that are of no interest to you and so is everyone else. But it is not just about usefulness. Even too much useful information might be information overflow to many of your readers out there. Keep in mind that they might be following not only you but hundreds or thousands of twitter users. If you send too much tweets, you push everyone else aside and you can be pretty sure that you won’t stay long on peoples follow list. Keep your activities low and send out just a few messages each day.
7. Measure your success
If you use tools like Google Analytics it is easy to track incoming links to your online store. Track your influence on twitter by adding tracking code to your links. Most users won’t mind since it won’t affect them in any way and if you shorten your URLs, no one will see the code anyway.
As you can see using twitter isn’t very hard if you follow some basic rules. Try it out and adjust your strategy as you go along. Learn about and from your followers and engage in communication.
Do you have some more advice? Please leave a comment so others can learn from your experiences!
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