Monday Morning Marketeer, Tweeting for Local Marketing

Tweet to Market to Locals

The Twitter social networking and micro-blogging service launched just over two years ago, has rocketed in usage numbers quickly, and recently turned red hot. There are four million connections between twitter users. It seems that a vast number of people are trying twitter but not many really know how to use it, as a matter of fact, yours truly is just beginning to learn herself.

However Celebrities have been quick to espouse twitter even having battles to see who can get more followers as in Ellen De Generes and Ashton Kutcher. There are articles and websites abounding on Twitter celebrites and twitter businesses. Other celebrities using Twitter: Britney Spears - With the launch of her new album, Ms. Spears is embracing the Internet with a redesigned website and the launch of a Twitter account. MC Hammer - Musician, pastor, rising Internet celeb - it seems MC Hammer pops up everywhere.

Twitter is going the way of Face Book and LinkedIn, from a casual optin espoused by the younger generation, it has become a “must do” for business owners. For the newbies out there here’s a quote from the blog 10,000 words which is all about journalism:
"Twitter is transforming from gimmicky messaging tool to marketing powerhouse." — Caroline McCarthy, WebWare

Ever since Barak Obama used Twitter so successfully to update his in person appearances and other info, Twitter has taken off. You might say Twittr is the the social media this president didn’t invent but at least popularized. Someone has actually called twitter the telegraph system of Web 2.0.

Many companies are rapidly cluing into the promotional value, but smaller businesses appear slow to hop on the bandwagon.
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Here are a few tips on leveraging Twitter to help your locally-oriented business.



Not completing a bio

The cardinal sin of most new Twitter users is not filling out the small but important section that says a bit about who they are. It could be a simple as a name (or a clever alias for the secret agents or painfully shy) or even just a sentence or two. If your goal is to get the conversation going — which is the point of Twitter after all — a bio can be the icebreaker.
You can also create a catchy, creative one line bio about yourself, please do! Remember twitter is social networking in miniature.


Protecting updates, but complaining about no followers

There are a few reasons to keep your updates private: not wanting to share your personal business with the world, thwarting spammers, etc. But many twitterers forget that by blocking updates from public view, they are also blocking potential followers. It's a give and take situation, so you gotta give a little to get something back.

Learning to use twitter effectively can definitely help you keep in touch with clients, prospects, suspects and others who can definitely grow your business.

Here’s the sort of thing you’d love to see: a customer happens by your store and is fascinated with something there, and “tweets” a pic of it out to all his Twitter followers:
Even better, if they endorse the business to their followers, this becomes an online species of word-of-mouth-marketing. So, how do you encourage this to happen?
Believe it or not, many internet savvy folks use twitter like they use the yellow pages. They may tweet about looking for Pittsburgh restaurant that has Middle Eastern Food or great fried chicken. How do you find these people and answer them, check out Twitter Search. http://search.twitter.com/ This morning I checked in on Pittsburgh Marketing and found 15 posts, I did not find anyone looking for a marketing company but I was able to find 15 posts and monitor what some of my competitors are doing.

Be careful of spamming, it’s a challenge with e-mail and twitter might catch you also. You don’t want to lose your account because you answered a specific question by spamming with information about your business that simply was not applicable.

Here are some tips to using Twitter for Local Marketing•

I list my on line radio show topics each week with a link of course, if you are an entertainment venue or non-profit, you can list that weeks events, meetings, free webinars, be creative.

The benefits of following others and having them follow you is cross marketing, your tweets appear on their page and theirs on yours, So collaborate with some non-competitive businesses on your tweeting.

If you have a local blog, tweet each time you post to promote your blog. Be sure to use a shortened URL in the tweet! You can find these at: Tiny URL


Tweet out pics of special stuff going on with your store— things like new product teasers, celebs who visit your store, other interesting aspects of stuff your company does like charitable fundraisers.

If business is slow that day, how about tweeting out an instant coupon with an eight hour deadline or “ today only!”

How about Tweet coupons that encourage tweet users to retweet your coupons or information.

Once you’ve built up sufficient numbers of followers, use Twitter to perform quick polls about what products, features, services your customers would prefer. Cheap, fast input from your client base!

Don’t just follow these tips, check out the tweeters that have thousands of followers and swipe and deploy what they are using, once an idea is out there unless it is copyrighted or trademarked it’s pretty much public domain, just please do not plagiarize, use the idea and make it your own.


Please do use the Twitter Directory

• Tweeter Directory
• Twitter Tools
• Twitter Mobile
• Wikis & Blogs
• Cool Stuff
• Twitter Bots
• Search Twitter
• Statistics & Tracking
• Twitter for Business
• Twitter Services
• Twitter Graphics
• Twitter Sharing
• Twitter Groups
• Twitter News
• Twitter Fame

This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:
© Joanne Quinn-Smith 2009, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-628-5048
Listen at: http://tinyurl.com/MondayMorningMarketeer
Blog: www.marketingmondaymorning.blogspot.com
Or on its unique radio channel at:
www.positivelypittsburghlivemgazine.com
Joanne Quinn-Smith is the Creative Energy Officer of Dreamweaver Marketing Associates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and an expert on Web 2.0 Branding.
Joanne has also been designated by the 2009 U.S. Small Business Administration as the Small Business Journalist of the Year for her work with information relevant to small business.
Follow at: https://twitter.com/monmornmarketer

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joannequinnsmith

The audio radio talkcast of this show can be heard on Monday Morning Marketeer unique radio channel at http://positivelypittsburghlivemagazine.com, date of show 5-11-09