Call Me Tweet Me
The Twitter revolution is upon us. Teens, pre-teens and young adults are doing it- twittering and tweeting all day long (yes-I like to call it twittering). All the hype caught the attention of many fortune 500 companies and popular television shows. Business owners are learning the benefit of using Twitter to raise brand awareness and generate leads. It’s become apparent that the value of the hashtag is higher than ever. #GetWithIt or #GetLost.
Twitter in a nutshell: born in 2006, the most current social media platform used to promote oneself or one’s business in 140 or less characters per tweet (message).
Personal Impact? I get the most current news before it’s ever aired on TV, written in a newspaper, or blogged about online. I prefer to follow the nationwide news networks such as The Associated Press @AP, @CNN, @FoxNews and CNN Breaking News @CNNbrk. I also follow local networks, such as @WFAAChannel8, @Fox4, @CBSDFW and @NBCDFW. I knew about the missing Malaysian airplane before Malaysia even knew it was missing. #Whoah (not really-but close).
I also use it to keep up with my Twitter-saavy friends who tweet about their Chipotle burritos, favorite song lyrics, today’s #OOTD (outfit of the day) or last weekend’s festivities. Sometimes I wish I had more time to tweet my daily activities. *Sigh*
Ever heard of live tweeting? That’s fun too: you can tweet with real live celebrities while your favorite TV shows are on air. I have successfully done it and am proud to say Amy Yancey of AE’s Flipping Vegas and I tweet. Just because it was once doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. She follows me.
Business Impact? The good news is, nearly any size business can use Twitter in the same way. Who wouldn’t want to join in on free brand awareness? It isn’t hard to come to the realization that nearly every major brand has a Twitter handle. The possibilities are endless. Delta created a Twitter handle specifically for customer service. They answer questions and complaints from customers through tweets. McDonalds gives out free prizes through their twitter handle. That’s right- FREE! #OMG #SuperSizeMe Levi Strauss & Co. tweets about current sales and promotions going on in stores. Learn about upcoming sales at favorite clothing stores before anyone else! Need some humor in your life? Oreo uses their Twitter handle to tweet pictures of Oreos featuring funny messages throughout the day. Brand awareness at its finest. Note to self- don’t scroll through Twitter feed during mid-afternoon productivity lull.
But wait – there’s more! Now you can ADVERTISE on Twitter. Crazy, right? Wrong. The strategy is very similar to Facebook if not identical. You can target as broad or as narrow as you please. You pick your main goal whether it be profile views, site views, engagement, leads etc. Finally you decide whether you’d like Twitter to automatically optimize the campaign/budget for you – or if you know how – you can manually optimize. These days you can advertise practically anywhere online. Except Instagram. They still think they’re too cool for all that (unless you’re Disney or Fossil). We shall see if this changes.. LinkedIn has also started swimming in the advertising pool. This should take off pretty quickly as it is also set up in the same way as Facebook and Twitter. Back to the main topic.
How many people use Twitter these days? According to DMR (Digital Marketing Ramblings), there are approximately 255 million Twitter users as of April 2014. Facebook still has a remarkably larger amount of users, coming in at an estimated 1.28 billion users as of April 2014. Instagram has almost tied with Twitter: 200 million users as of March 2014. Another one you might be familiar with: Pinterest, which has 70 million users as of July 2013
Join the revolution. Follow the me at @MaryERobb 🙂