Bang For Buck – How to Best Apply Twitter to Your Business

Social Media is a somewhat generic, indistinctly defined term that describes one of the big digital trends of today. An explosion in the internet connectivity of both individuals and businesses (collectively, potential customers) has built a network of people with something to say! Free, easy to use tools are now available, allowing the most amateur of web users to quickly get online and record their opinion. At the same time, we have seen a community of "information-consumers" grow around this content and together, begin a process of collaboration as information and opinions are exchanged across a network of mutually interested users. The capacity for "buzz" to grow around exciting new ideas is clear as social media brings together these digital communities. So people are sharing new ideas and opinions - what are they saying about your business? Are you involved - do you have a voice in these conversations? The power of traditional advertising is being eroded as people look to the "truth" they find on the internet rather than the empty promises of a glossy television commercial or magazine advertisement. Business reputations are being won and lost online.

One of the more high profile tools currently employed in the world of social media is, of course, Twitter. 140 characters at a time, Twitter offers businesses immediate connectivity with prospects and customers - real feedback, constructive criticism and an opportunity to build a fan base around your market offering. The problem is now, how do you manage this additional workload and optimize your twitter-time? New tools have developed around this issue.

TwitterFeed.com offers some interesting functionality and does not require any particular technical knowledge. Let's say your business has some social media ideas it wants to trial. Perhaps you want to make sure you keep on top of product queries or information requests. You want to offer improved timeliness around customer service and you want to know what people are saying about you and your business - right now! TwitterFeed can join up all the dots for you to allow you a single integrated management solution. Let's say you already have a blog or a Facebook account. What TwitterFeed allows you to do is take a feed from either or both of these platforms and direct it to your Twitter account. You can then connect your Twitter account to your chosen management platform (perhaps your corporate blog) so that you have a central view of all your social media activities. Additionally, you can create a feed from an external site that you follow or that you believe may be of interest to your customers. Effectively this allows you to leverage input from qualified commentators in order to provide a more useful overall experience for your customers. You can also link multiple RSS feeds to a single Twitter account or link individual feeds to multiple Twitter accounts. Most importantly, TwitterFeed supports integration with Google Analytics. Each published post has its own tag allowing Google Analytics to analyze every click you receive from any of your integrated platforms. You might find that your Facebook friends tend to generate different feedback or click on different posts than your Twitter friends, allowing you to tailor your content accordingly. For an online marketer this tool offers endless opportunities to tailor and optimize to ensure the right messages appear on the right medium and are seen by the right people. With effectively focused delivery comes increased return on marketing dollars. Most excitingly, as you build your social media presence you are building a long term marketing asset and adding to your corporate brand value. This makes a nice change from more traditional marketing that can often involve pouring cash into a black hole and hoping you generate some returns.

It is self evident that if you are going to pursue a social media strategy, you must keep on top of all your online points of presence and offer timely responses. Your TwitterFeed account allows you to manage this obligation efficiently - at the same time, by allowing for consolidation of your online presence it maximizes the power of your social media message. TwitterFeed is still in a high development phase and does suffer from the occasional bug - but it is solid overall and well worth a look.

Other great tools exist to help manage and control your social media activities:

Betweeted.com - more or less this is Google AdWords and Google AdSense for your twitter account. It relies on tweeters to promote advertising links on their tweet network. Builds on the idea that the Twitter community will not twitter about links that have not been tested and verified - Betweeted just gives the network a nudge in the right direction for advertisers.

Twitter Tools - download this plug-in from the WordPress site and you will be up and running with complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter.

Twhirl.org - great little desktop client used to view your Twitter account live. TWhirl uses Adobe AIR (free download) and provides a rich client interface that cannot be matched by any browser.

Twitter Search and Google Alerts - Twitter has purchased Summize, a great service that provides Twitter search functionality and comes with an Application Programming Interface to allow for customized searches and filters. This functionality (now offered within Twitter Search) and Google Alerts (email distribution of the results of specific Google searches you can create and schedule) allow you to monitor who is talking about you, your products or any other aspect you care to track.

Social Media is out there right now and all businesses need to make sure they have a strategy for dealing with it. Set out above are just a few of the tools that can help but underlying the use of the tools you need a clear plan of attack and a solid understanding of your social media goals. Get some professional advice and get started!

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