Beginners Guide to Twitter

Having a profile for your brand on the popular microblogging site isn't enough. You have to create a real presence. Our expert shows you how.

It is important to recognize and understand the nuances of Twitter as a communications channel. The genius is in its simplicity, but it's still a tool that consumers and businesses can leverage many ways.

My team conducted an exhaustive and extensive survey of the Twitterverse and how consumers use the platform for their needs. Check out some of the ways people use Twitter.

It is significant to note that 56 percent use it in some professional, marketing, or work-related capacity.

Conversations on Twitter happen quickly, and there are many benefits to your brand. Below is a tweet from Scott Monty from Ford on the value of Twitter as Ford sees it.

So how can and should your brand use Twitter? And more importantly, what are the most common mistakes and pitfalls on Twitter that could have a negative impact on your business or brand?

Let's take a look.

You need to have a unified experience consistent with your brand so as not to confuse consumers. Your Twitter profile is where people go to quickly discover how you are using Twitter and learn more about your business. Make sure that you get your brand or business messaging across using the 140-character descriptor field.

It is acceptable to tell them how you are going to use this Twitter channel and set expectations. For example, if your account is strictly for distribution of an RSS feed and there will be no human interaction, tell them so. Companies like SUN and Dell have multiple Twitter channels -- each specifically geared to deliver niche content to a target audience.

Tip: Update your Twitter page background with an image that conveys the positioning of the brand. A good example is Dunkin Donuts.

Notice how the company uses a visually branded background, page font, color, and an icon that are all consistent with its brand. Also note that the bio is descriptive, concise, and links to the Dunkin Donuts' homepage.

"Bio: Dunkin' Dave here, tweeting on the behalf of the DD mothership. I'm an American and I'm certifiably running on Dunkin."

Twitter effectively allows you to be the "fly on the wall" at a cocktail party. When an opportunity presents itself to join a conversation and interact, you should be ready. But you have to listen in order to do this efficiently.

Listening is a critical part of using Twitter if you want to be relevant and add value for the people who matter the most to your business. You can search Twitter as a lightweight form of brand and reputation management. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ to set up a number of persistent searches for your brand, as well as keywords that your users might be tweeting, and monitor them so you have the relevant knowledge of what is being said. This will allow you to respond and react accordingly in a timely fashion. You can also set up these searches as an RSS feed to monitor with something like Google Reader.

When users tweet @yourcompany, they are specifically reaching out to you and expecting some sort of response. User expectations are that if a brand or company is on Twitter, then it is there to interact. Failure to respond can have negative ramifications and is most commonly looked upon from a consumer's perspective as a sign that you don't care enough to respond. This is not what you want to have happen.

Responding in a timely manner and in a public fashion can have a very positive impact, as your followers and the followers of the person that you are interacting with will see that your company is engaging.

The bar has been raised, and the expectation for response from your brand has been increased dramatically. Now is the time to take this opportunity to increase your brand's engagement levels.

Most marketing people create a "message" and push it to multiple distribution points. That tactic does not work well in the Twitter ecosystem. While using Twitter to push press releases or automatic distribution of an RSS feed from your company blog might be appealing, the consumption model is minimal. Only linking to your website in your tweets will quickly become boring to your followers.

When you have people follow you, they follow for a reason. They have effectively "opted in" to hear what you are publishing and sharing. Focus on adding value and giving them what they want. Use this channel as a way to communicate industry news and trends -- insights that are valuable to your target audience.

Interaction is the key to building influence on Twitter. Share openly and don't only talk about your services. Find a way to mix it up and be interesting and human in your interactions.

Tip: Focus on adding value to the people who matter most and you can't go wrong.

There are several ways to measure the ROI of your efforts on Twitter. You need to choose clearly defined metrics for how you will measure and rank key criteria. The easiest -- but least valuable -- metric is how many people follow you. While this is a general indication of "popularity," it is not a good metric of influence, customer interaction, or customer satisfaction.

You will want to measure the number of interactions, the number of people you touch, and the net outcome of those interactions and conversations. For example, did you take an initial negative brand detractor and move that person to a higher satisfaction level, or to the point where they have become a brand evangelist?

You might also want to consider looking at the number of mentions of your brand as a general way to measure buzz or velocity as a topic of conversation in the ecosystem.

Also, consider the number of times your content is re-tweeted (noted on Twitter as "RT @yourbrand") and pushed through the network by multiple people. What is the effective "reach and influence" of the people that re-tweeted your content? This is actually an important metric when you look at how often people find your content interesting and "sharable." Interesting and valuable content is more likely to get re-tweeted by your followers.

You should also track the landing page of your site and how many people come from Twitter and what they do once they are on your site. This will help you to determine the behavior of the people that come from Twitter and what they are interested in.

It is important that, somewhere on your main site, you have a "directory" of people from your business that tweet on behalf of the company. It is also important that these people's bios are descriptive.

Companies like Dell use the word "Dell" in the user name (richardatdell, lionelatdell, etc.).

Kodak employees clearly identify themselves on Twitter via a visual branding profile image. Note the brand logo on the lower portion.

Many marketers make the rookie mistake of setting up an account on Twitter and not clearly defining how it will be used. Just because you are "on Twitter" does not mean you are using it in the most valuable way.

In fact, your company might need several different Twitter accounts that align with the target market and desired communication/business outcome. The low-hanging fruit that most companies are using it for is customer support or brand and reputation management. This is far from the only way that Twitter can be used.

As an example, Ford has six different Twitter accounts. Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments:
• FordTrucks
• FordDriveOne
• FordDriveGreen
• FordCustService
• FordMustang
• FordRacing

Here are just a few examples of how you might want to use Twitter:
• Customer support and service
• Brand reputation management
• Polling and product feedback mechanism
• Lead generation
• News distribution
• Brand awareness and establishment
• Product promotion and launch
• Humanizing of a brand
• Public relations

Ad Strategy in Social Media

If you use traditional media assessment formulas to plan an ad strategy in the new world of social media, you're making a big mistake. Here's why. If you knew of a way to drive lower cost-per-conversion rates for your online advertising campaigns, while super-charging ad performance, wouldn't you tell your media buyers to adopt that method, pronto?

Advertising against social media (on blog sites or within social networks) promises far better returns than traditional online content, but many advertisers are struggling when it comes to tapping into the power of these user-generated content (UGC) networks.

Social media -- in which word-of-mouth communication reigns -- is unparalleled at building passionate networks of like-minded people, particularly in the blogosphere. Of course, the nebulous world of social media is also a thorn in advertisers' collective sides due to a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the unpredictable content it generates and the difficulty in accurately measuring its impact.

Why is social media so hard to corral and measure? One reason is that the people creating the kind of influential content that impacts consumer behavior aren't necessarily the people who claim the most eyeballs. An "influencer" may have a small audience from a numbers' standpoint but can also have a massive impact on your target customers' buying habits.

The recent Nielsen//NetRatings announcement about the new "time spent" metric underscores this issue. The industry shift away from the page view as the unrivaled metric king demonstrates that the number of hits on a website doesn't necessarily equal the most value for your advertising dollar.

Since the most influential blogs don't always have the biggest audiences, traditional online advertising models can be far off the mark when it comes to reaching the most qualified leads.

For example, an ad buy targeted to a search result is unlikely to place you in front of networks of people with a passion for the product or service you're offering. However, a blog that draws together a community of like-minded readers -- who engage in discussions and share ideas and opinions -- has the loyal audience that can significantly drive up conversion rates.

Initial research bears this out: A recent study from BlueLithium Labs compared ads on sites with UGC, and sites without such content. The ads on non-UGC sites had a 32 percent higher conversion rate; however, due to the lower cost of advertising on UGC sites, the cost-per-conversion for non-UGC sites was 58 percent higher.
Advertisers are sensing this promise. The latest research from eMarketer shows that ad spending on websites that feature UGC (like photo and video sharing) is expected to rise to $4.3 billion by 2011.

The key is for advertisers to define the kind of social media (blogs, for example) that best fits their overall brands and specific campaigns, then design an effective way to surface the content that will truly deliver from an ad perspective.

Finding the people who influence consumer behavior
Locating influencers is a tough online challenge, especially in an internet landscape characterized by traditional media, UGC, social networks and 12 million blogs in the United States alone. Popularity ranking and subjective authority evaluations of a particular website or blog fall short when you take a closer look. A blogger who is considered an authority on a given topic might hold great influence when it comes to that subject but could have less or zero influence if a new topic is introduced. Likewise, a specific web page may be "popular" but ranks very low on the influence scale on a specific topic within a certain context.

A year or so ago, online marketers were advised to listen to online conversations in order to gauge what was being said about their products. Listening will always be critical, but as social media matures as a marketing channel, zeroing in on the content to actually engage with it is becoming increasingly important for brands.
Fortunately, new technologies are making it easier to find the influencers who matter more quickly. And some marketers are finding that, when it comes to social media, simply building relationships with online opinion leaders can create marketing events that deliver measurable business impact.

Screenlife Games, a Seattle-based maker of DVD games, recently used influence-targeting technology to build awareness of the 2007 edition of its "American Idol" game, based on the TV series of the same name.

Screenlife was able to hone in on blogs most likely to attract potential buyers of the game. This was accomplished by searching for conversational phrases specific to the 2007 season, such as "Melinda is the best," that would indicate the presence of a dedicated crowd of "American Idol" fans, or fans of Screenlife games, and not just a blog that mentioned the "Idol" show once or twice.

"We're able to catch general fans of the show and focus in on specific conversations about our game," explains Tony Roscelli, Screenlife's director of consumer research. "We can find out what they like and parlay it into marketing programs."
By monitoring conversations, and understanding who is interacting with the most passionate customers and to what effect, advertisers can generate lists of niche blogs and websites they may not have been aware of, and integrate this data into their online advertising strategy.

Another example of maximizing the power of social media can be seen with Protuo.com, a provider of web-based career portfolio management services. Protuo was in search of the elusive "influencer" audience when it decided to leverage social media technology to help uncover blogs focusing on career and human resources issues.
By monitoring online conversations about recruiting and hiring strategies, the company was able to identify the bloggers most likely to draw an audience that would use Protuo's services. Protuo then invited key bloggers to review its offerings, which spurred discussion and ultimately increased traffic and Protuo.com registrations. During its influence campaign, overall traffic to Protuo.com has risen 27 percent. What's more, Protuo found that traffic from influential websites converted to registration 40 percent better than online leads generated from other sites.

Before you set out to identify the online influencers that are most important to your advertising strategy, make sure you and your team understand how social media requires a different plan of action.

1. Know your marketing goals: Be careful not to get roped into helming a social media marketing or advertising effort simply because it's trendy. Before embarking on these initiatives, take the time to understand what you want from your ad spend. How do you want creators and consumers of social media to respond to your ad efforts? What is their ideal experience? Clicking on a text link off of a blog post, or reading blog coverage of your company from a source they trust and traveling to your site via an embedded link? Figure out the answers to these questions before jumping into a social media advertising program.

2. Rethink the definition of marketing communications: If you use traditional media assessment formulas to plan an ad strategy in the new world of social media, you're making a big mistake. Social media is much more than another way to communicate with your target market; it's a way for your customers to trade information that helps them make better decisions, given that they've become somewhat hardened about marketing spin. These days, they prefer to take their cues from other consumers whom they trust. For a social media-based ad campaign to be successful, it needs to be based on authentic interactions at every stage of the customer lifecycle, not just when you're pushing messages out to them.


3. Find the influencers: You can't plan an online advertising strategy until you know how to reach an audience that's primed to hear your messages. You need to identify where the conversations that connect to your marketing goals are taking place, and who is shaping those conversations. Since influence in the social media world isn't always determined by audience size, this can lead to some interesting surprises. The process of finding influencers turns some conventional ideas about marketing upside down. Rather than first searching for advertising targets and then deciding where and when to advertise, the process begins by determining what's being said, and figuring out who is saying it.

4. See beyond the assumed customer base: Marketers need to recognize that influencers are not always the current customers for their company's products and services. They can be former customers who have become dissatisfied, they may be fans of your competitors, or they may simply have strong opinions about your market. The ability to see beyond your own customer base is an important skill for social media engagement.

5. Redefine what "advertising" means: It's not just about placing an ad anymore. For instance, companies like Protuo can use a social media engagement strategy to generate online leads (which is the objective of many paid search ad campaigns). As a result, the company was able to generate traffic that converted to action better than incoming leads from typical online advertising methods. Marketers don't necessarily associate "influencer marketing" with hard metrics, but the dense network of links that power social media conversations enables consumers reading their favorite blogs to quickly jump to the kind of content that will trigger a purchase.


6. Take a multi-pronged approach: In social media, traditional online ad placement isn't enough to engage your potential customers. Participation is a key step. Comment on the blogs of key influencers. Write your own posts in order to challenge them on important topics. Join in the conversation instead of waiting for the conversation to come to you.

Finally, a key piece of advice for any marketer who wants to stick a toe in the social media waters: If this is your first foray into a social media advertising effort, don't invest too much in the first campaign. Do it quickly, do it cheaply and change strategies if needed. The good news is that social media -- with its low cost of entry and speed of access -- lends itself well to this kind of marketing journey.

Word of Mouth "Viral" Marketing – Understanding Social Pillars - Moribund of Traditional Research

Word of mouth influence is older than the apostles, but the advent of the Internet has taken it to new levels. Of the 24% of adult consumers who say they ‘regularly’ make online purchases, twice as many say they ‘regularly’ seek advice from others before buying than adults who never or occasionally purchase online.

Peer-to-peer communication is most influential to consumers’ decisions across the seven product categories (Car/Truck, Electronics, Apparel/Clothing, Groceries, Medicine, Telecom and Eating Out) that were measured in nearly every age group, but it was especially true of younger people, many of whom belong to one or more social networks such as Facebook, Blackbook2, Myspace or Xanga. Research shows that 18-34 consumers are especially influenced by the opinions of their friends in the categories of ‘electronics’ and ‘eating out’. Friends or social networks for those 18-24 are even more pronounced with over 50% of purchases influence the figures.

The Viral Bandwagon:
With figures like these, it is little wonder that online and offline marketers are racing to build a marketing infrastructure and measurement systems to enable more effective word of mouth marketing campaigns. Everyone from Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp to Carnival Cruises is building – or buying -- a social network. According to Emarketer, 43% of marketers are planning to use a word of mouth marketing campaign within the next 6 months.

But What Do Consumers Want To Talk About?
According to Blogpulse (Nielsen Buzzmetrics), only a fraction of the online conversations concern brands and products. This raises the question, ‘how can marketers consistently give consumers the tools for initiating dialogs that influence brand standing and sales?’ Do we, as marketers really know how to translate brand strategies into ‘viral’ messages?

Traditional market research is not a lot of help in this new “Viral" world. Consider for a moment that the basic tools of market research are about as foreign to social marketing as corporate procurement is to EBay.
- Recruit random samples of strangers
- Put them in an artificial environments
- Ask them to reacte to marketer devised creative ideas or worse, ‘concept statements’
- Control the dialog with little ability to capture consumer language or emotion
- Allow little respondent interaction

Identifying "Viral" Potential:
Social marketing (influence Pillars) is about understanding what consumers find worthy of talking to others about in the environment where those conversations take place – social networks. Social Pillars include music, clothing, sports, culture, etc.

Working in partnership with an existing networks, identifying respondents by their interests and viewing conversations so you can identify which ideas have the greatest ‘viral’ potential.

It Starts With A Community:
Brands that already have an online community are natural candidates for using the Social Marketing to gain insights about how consumers interact – or would like to interact – to spread the word about the brands they love.

We have identified thousands of brand communities within its network covering a wide range of brands and topics, everything from Apple to Kraft Easy Mac to soap operas. For instance, with no marketing effort at all, 650 communities have sprung up to share experiences about Jeep alone! There are nearly 20,000 people who initiated or joined a group with the word ‘soap opera’ in the name.

There are numbers of Urban boards that have been responsible for the start of "Viral" communications for brands. Starbury Sneakers success is due to these boards. Understand - Brand (sales) success starts in Urban communities and spreads to suburban communities. Hush Puppies is another great example of the power of Urban "Trend Setters" and "Influencers".

Companies that have started a customer or consumer panel are in an especially good position to explore opportunities for viral marketing. For example, Sam’s Club has built a panel of small business members who are eager to connect with similar like-minded business people. However, any online community can provide a starting point.

Blurring The Line Between Research And Marketing:
Researchers have always known that the mere act of asking a question influences the response. Social Network Marketing takes this basic insight and leverages it to not only gain insights, but to influence the network. By studying which ideas stimulate brand conversations, marketers will be better able to consistently identify the most powerful viral ideas. Consumers want to talk about brands and products. Now marketers have a way of learning how to influence the process.