Is Twitter Still Viable As a Marketing Tool?

By Bill Davis on Apr 25, 2012 in Social Media | 0 comments

Share This Now!

Is Twitter Still Viable As a Marketing Tool

Twitter Marketing

Before Facebook, Twitter was the darling of social media. All the movie stars used it: Folks like Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, and Alyssa Milano were avid users of twitter. Most still are. However, twitter seems to have lost some ground—perhaps a lot—to Facebook, Google+, and even that up-and-coming social media sensation, Pinterest.

But just because twitter has lost some “mind share,” does that make it useless as a social media channel? Is twitter still a viable marketing tool?

Put another way, should you abandon twitter and go for the new bright shiny social media sites OR should you revamp your social media strategy to use twitter in new and novel ways?

Well, Bryan and I think the latter. Here’s why and—more importantly—how we will be using twitter to help get the word out about Profit Pathz. Ideally, we want to draw more followers (i.e., build our Tribe) and drive them to ProfitPathz.com.

How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool

I’ve often used twitter as a social media megaphone. But that’s probably the wrong way to use it. More appropriately, twitter is a two-way social media channel that you can use to not only promote your ideas but also get direct, nearly instantaneous feedback—an online conversation—from your followers.

In other words, twitter ought to be used as a near-real-time discussion tool rather than a one-way “Hey, look at me” as I run nekkid (virtually, of course) across the twitter landscape.

I will pause there for a moment so that you can wash your eyes with soap…

Okay…back to using twitter as a marketing tool.

Now, let’s not forget that the Law of Reciprosity need not be trumped the the Law of Turning People Off by Blatant and Exaggerated Self-Promotion. Meaning, of course, that you need to tone it down a bit when tweeting about you or your business.

We use the 80/20 rule:

80 percent of the time—promote, share, or re-tweet other people’s stuff.
20 percent of the time—promote, share, or tweet about you or your business.

When other active twitter users (i.e., “tweeple“) are mentioned in your tweets, they notice. And they may just begin following you on twitter, visiting your websites, and promoting you and your business. They may confine their mentions of you to twitter or they may expand to other social sites like YouTube, Facebook, and their own blogs.

So, Bryan and I definitely believe that twitter is still a viable and very valuable marketing tool that you can use to establish your brand, communicate with your customers and prospects, and get the word out about the goods and services you have for sale.

In a future post, we’ll share with you how to “mod” your twitter background, avatars, and profile for maximum effect. We’ll also show you how to use twitter as a content syndication tool that you can use to start discussions while simultaneously re-purposing your awesome content.

Stay tuned for that.