More Twitter Tips From The Field

After receiving several emails the past few days concerning my social media and Twitter tips from the field columns, many of you requested more just like it. Many of the letters I received shared personal business experiences in using social media, notably Twitter. For the rest of this week, one of my daily columns will be more social media and Twitter tips from the field.

So, to appease the Twitter followers out there, I will share more form my field research. As mentioned in previous columns, this research will be soon published in an e-book on social media I’ll have out within the next could months. If you would like to  get your name on the notice list, go to the home page on my website and sign up for my free business journal. You will be notified through my subscription office once the book is completed. Not to mention receiving ongoing Internet marketing-related freebies.

Some of the responses contain tips that have worked for that particular business, others are strategies and techniques used to garner a greater marketing presence and attract customers. If you are looking for what their return on investment (ROI), you will not find it here. Seeing that social media sites for the most part are free, gaining even one paid customer is a positive investment of time. However, many of the respondents shared information concerning  increases in media attention, website visitors, and social media site followers. In a nutshell, that is what business are using social media for, not to sell products, but to create a relationship.

So, on with the show, and here you go:

1. I am a 47 yr old mid-level exec in the automotive industry in southeastern Michigan. I started a side business buying rental real estate properties four or so years ago. After seeing some substantial success with my rental properties, I saw demand in the market for a seminar to teach my approach, so started a seminar business last year. With a day job, my rentals, and my seminar business, I had no time to do any networking, and I was also looking for some good PR. So I turned to Twitter a little over a year ago. I use the adjunct Twitter application Twellow to selectively target people to follow. I engaged them consistently over a period of months, then started reaping the benefits.

Among my wins:

• I was interviewed briefly on CNBC
• I was profiled on CNNMoney.com http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0906/gallery.silver_lining/5.html
• The CNNMoney.com profile was picked up by my local paper: http://www.hometownlife.com/article/20090705/NEWS02/907050341/1019/Bucking%20the%20bad%20times
• I was interviewed for an MSN real estate article.  http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=20663231
• My business will be profiled in two books as a case study this fall.
• I was interviewed in an article to be published in CPAmerica’s next “Of Real Value” newsletters
• I’m being interviewed on Unlock Your Wealth Radio on Saturday Aug 1 at 10:15 am Pacific Time. My profile will be up on the site sometime this morning.  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/unlockyourwealth
• And finally, I was interviewed for and will be prominently featured in the Sep Issue of Smart Money Magazine, both online and offline.

My plan is to continue doing what I’m doing because of the results. Dennis Fassett  DennisFassett.com

2.  Ventureneer.com is a startup. We needed to build a following quickly and on a shoestring. We began Tweeting a couple weeks after launching my blog, Vistas (http://ventureneer.com/vblog). Tweets are a mix of links to news, blog posts and conversations with followers. @Ventureneer has 1400 followers and was  #7 on topfollowfriday.com #FollowFriday list. Twitter is responsible for about 5% of traffic to Ventureneer. More importantly it is positioning the company as a credible source of news and information for small business and nonprofit leaders. Potential marketing partners are impressed with our tweeting and it is one of the reasons that organizations want to work with us.  Geri Stengel  www.ventureneer.com

3.  I am the President of MyClothingCalendar (www.myclothingcalendar.com), a FREE online clothing journal that records what you wore with friends, family, colleagues and clients at social events, business meeting or any occasion.  We are trying to stay lean since we just launched two months ago and all the marketing we have used is via social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The way we have used Twitter to date is to help us gain new users, by updating the status of our company and posting relevant stories in the fashion industry. I have reached out to various celebrity stylist and PR within fashion so that they update their Twitter account about our website. I have also used the search function within Twitter and typed in “wardrobe” to see what people are saying about their wardrobe and then if applicable, I would send them tweets about our website. We have seen a nice uptick in signups from individuals who are listing Twitter as how they heard about us.  Matthew Wolkofsky  Twitter.com/MyClothngCalndr

4.  At Penta Events, we used Twitter to publicize and receive donations for Penta Cares Third Annual Charity Golf Outing benefiting the American Diabetes Association. Our goal was to exceed the proceeds from last year’s outing- that amounted to over $36,000 for the ADA. It has been successful thus far as we have received donations for the golfers gift bags and gift certificates/ items for the raffle and auction.  Penta Cares created a Twitter page in order to keep up with current networking trends. At first, responses were slow. However, we now know that it is most effective to use @TwitterUserName in our posts so that it specifies who we are targeting and our followers can chose to follow those companies that are supporting the ADA. Using @TwitterUserName for our charity requests makes companies more inclined to donate (as they realize we have over 260 followers that see the request). This is a great inexpensive marketing tool for these companies to receive positive publicity and to get their name out to their target audience. Once we have gotten a response, we use “direct messaging” to receive email addresses to forward more detailed information on the event.   Laura R. Beller  www.pentaevents.com http://Twitter.com/PentaCares

5.  Here’s a quick success story:

• We created http://www.followformation.com/
• On launch day, covered by Mashable: http://mashable.com/2009/07/14/followformation/
• The Examiner called us the “Alltop for Twitter”: http://www.examiner.com/x-11216-Twitter-Examiner~y2009m7d16-Alltop-model-for-Twitter-from-Followformation
• We’ve created a first-of-its-kind social media advertising platform for companies that really want to make a splash with the social media neophyte target audience
• Was difficult because we’re working with very limited funding - we are, after all, mostly still students at the University of British Columbia (http://www.ubc.ca/)
• Our next steps are to build out the application on other social networks and to geofilter into individual cities, working with GeoFollow.com in the process. Brian Wong  |  www.aermarketing.com | twitter.com/brian_wong

6.  I use Twitter for most of my marketing. I think it is almost single handedly responsible for the fact that I have subscribers in every state. I keep a light mix of personal and business relationships with my target audience - moms. It has brought me business as well as blog connections. Dawn Billesbach  Founder and Creator of menufortheweek.com