Using twitter as a marketing tool is a topic of some debate in the marketing world. I have read many articles in favor of this technique and equally as many against it. This article is not about the pros and cons of using twitter, it is about how to effectively use twitter as a marketing tool in today’s fast pace world.

In writing this article, I am assuming that you have at least some previous knowledge of twitter or are already using it to market your brand to the world. So let’s really dive into twitter and break it down so we can all understand how to successfully use it.

Don’t get caught up in a numbers game. The quality of your message and the quality of your followers is much more important to your brand than just having thousands of followers. What do I mean about quality of your message? In using twitter, is important to provide your followers with useful and insightful information that directly correlates to your brand’s message while providing something your followers can hopefully retweet. You want them to look forward to reading your posts.

Twitter is not just status updates! Twitter is a venue where you can express your brand or yourself in way to captivate and socially interact with your followers. Twitter, in essence, is about building online relationships with your followers. If you’re boring and just keep retweeting a sales pitch or a generic message your website followers will have no desire to interact with you. People ultimately have the need to be taken seriously and to feel important. By tweeting relevant, useful, interesting information your followers are provided with something to talk about which makes them the center of attention. All this results in your tweets being retweeted by fellow users, your message reaching more people, and directly that in essence turns in to more follows and more traffic to your website, blog, or whatever you are trying to promote.

In order to develop interesting tweets, you need to ask yourself some important questions. Who is my target demographic? What other interests do they have? What other companies are they likely to be following? What topics interest them? After you have identified these questions, along with others you add yourself, you can start directly targeting these groups on twitter.

Now that we have identified the group or groups we want to target, how do we go about implementing a plan of action to gain followers?

One of the greatest features of twitter is the pound sign feature. For example, say one of my target groups has an interest in going green or in sustainability practices. I would use the search bar and enter the pound sign followed by key words in order to see if other people are tweeting about the same issues I plan to tweet about. (#green, #eco, #sustainability… etc.) After entering these fields in the search bar you will be directed to a real time list of twitter users tweeting about these same issues. After you locate the appropriate pound sign lists it is important to include these “#topics” into your tweets whenever possible because in doing so a hyperlink will be created for your “#topics” and then put you directly into the real time list you just searched for.

Now that we know how to find users tweeting about the same issues as we are let’s talk a little about tweet frequency. This is a two edged sword. Tweet too much and other users will view it as spam, tweet too little and people with stop following you because you are of no benefit to them. It is important to update everyday but in my opinion you really shouldn’t update over seven times in any given day. Make sure you get at least one tweet in there. In regards to content, just try and follow the guidelines I laid out before. You know your demographic better than I do but try to be creative and provide real-time links to articles related to the general context of your message.

One thing twitter users hate is long URL’s. It reduces an already small character limit and it is just plain annoying to avid twitter users. One great site to shorten URL’s to a few characters instead of a massive ugly looking link is http://tinyurl.com. You just copy and paste your desired URL into the box they provide and it shortens the URL down immensely so your followers can focus on your message not your ugly URL making your overall profile much more aesthetically pleasing.

Another great technique to find interesting people to follow and then hopefully in return gain followers is to look at who is following your competitors. Go to their twitter, click on followers, and then follow anyone that looks like they could potentially be interested in what you have to offer.

Starting new to twitter can be daunting but when you truly utilize it as the powerful marketing tool it can be it will pay off in the long run. I believe twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your website, and reach your target demographic very easily. By implementing these few steps in just a week I was almost over 100 followers, am on nine lists, and have driven a decent amount of traffic to my own website all for free. Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool if you know how to use it.

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Colin Harper is a student and entrepreneur with a passion for self betterment. He owns Elon Apparel, an organic clothing company and loves to share his insights on life with everyone he comes in contact with. http://elonapparel.com/Similar Posts:

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