10 great tips to develop a strong relationship with your Twitter followers

Be smart! A huge list of followers means a potential huge number of customers

In terms of traffic, Twitter went up almost 2,700% in one year, from May 2008 to May 2009. That can only mean everyone is getting a Twitter account. And when I say everyone, I mean especially customers for companies that believe in using social media as a medium to promote themselves. What does that mean for marketers? It means it’s time to talk about how to use Twitter as a marketing tool as its best, ignoring the junk advice you can find with Google

You are a marketing worker for a company and you want to promote the business using social media. You think Twitter is helpful. What should you do? First of all, you create an account. You probably know what kind of people you want as clients. What can you do? The first step is to inform yourself. Let’s start with the stuff you should ignore.

Strategies you shouldn’t follow

If your Twitter account is older than 2 weeks, then you’ve probably noticed that some of your followers are twitting about how to emprove the number of your followers, how to get 400 new followers a day, how to engage your followers to become customers. Click the links and you’ll get to websites where you’re invited either to pay for some book or e-book, or to subscribe to some mailing list.

Forget about them! Anyone can compile a list of “strategies” about how to use Twitter. I can write 20 Word pages right now, then go to Clickbank.com and “publish” a book with a title such as “10 best practices to engage your Twitter followers to become your clients“. You’ll pay me, you’ll read what I wrote and eventually, you’ll discover that you want your money back. Does it worth the effort? No. Does it worth subscribing to mailing list? No, because you’d probably get spammed pretty soon. Now here’s some good advice about what you can do and can actually bring results.

If that’s wrong, what should I do?

That’s what you’d probably ask, right? Well, here’s a list of what you should do:

1. Follow your competition.

   This way, you can learn what strategies they approach and what you should NOT do. Doing the same only makes you look unoriginal, and you have to be unique.

2. Follow PR and marketing agencies

   Find those agencies you know they enjoy writing strategies about social media and online marketing and follow their Twitter accounts. You’ll get plenty of links to helpful resources about how to promote your business. Pay attention to what you read and try to use what you think it might help.

3. Use search.twitter.com to find people that wrote about products like yours and follow them

   No, don’t follow everyone. That’s wrong. You’ll lose track of what’s important to your business. Follow only those that you suspect they might follow back. Follow everyone that’s following you and pay attention to whatever they say about your industry. Tell them your opinion.

Now it’s time to go to the part where you actually do something productive. The first three steps above are essential in getting to know your public and your competition, but the next four are crucial in understanding how you should approach your public. Paying attention to how people understand to use Twitter is what gives you the advantage when you’ll start a campaign.

Start a conversation!

As a marketing worker, you probably read tons of blogs and pages about new trends and strategies. Last year, at Cannes Lions, Nick Moore, CCO Wunderman, had this presentation about what agencies should do for their clients. And his presentation had this title: “Start a conversation“. This is not a trend anymore, it is a must. People want to talk about brands. They want to talk with the brands. They want to feel safe when buying your product. That’s why you should talk to them. That’s why you actually use Twitter, right? Let’s see what you should do:

1. Start talking to the people

   Before posting any links to your company’s website, blog or services/products pages, ask the people you follow what are their expectations. No, your products may not fulfill their wishes, but send your message as they would. Start talking about their hopes and give them links to your products only after they show their interest.

2. Reply to all questions

   Don’t ever avoid answering people’s questions. If they say your products suck, try to explain the contrary. Don’t fight with them, you’ll lose. If you don’t answer, they’ll think you ignore them. Ignore them and they will ignore your products. Give them suggestions and you’ll be their best friend. Link to your cheapest products, but tell them what are your better alternatives that can suit their needs.

3. Give them resources. Even from your competition

   If you and your competition have similar products and you know their product is better, sell your competitions product, but tell the people that’s the only thing they might have better. Then suggest one of your similar products and pack it as it would be better, even if it might not be cheaper.

4. Link to cool stuff

   People are eager to consume as much information as they can. Is your company a furniture producer? Link to beautiful interior designs. Is your business a web design company? Link to case studies and beautiful websites, even if they’re not your works. Are you an internet marketing specialist? Link to articles about online marketing. Become a source to useful news for your followers.

That should do it, right? Well, no. That’s not enough. That’s not going to get you 10.000 followers in a week. Neither will following everyone. But it’s not the quantity you should be interested in. You should be interested in those people that really need your services or your products. You’re interested in customers.

“Bribe” your potential customers

Bribery is not likeable and, under no circumstance, acceptable, right? But bribery doesn’t always have the same meaning. For example, you can “tip” or “bribe” your followers in different ways. And no cop is going to arrest you for what it’s called a “marketing action”. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Give your products for testing

   If you work for an automotive company, talk to dealers to prepare a few cars for test-drives. Invite your followers to go for a ride. If you’re a software company, give a copy of one of your products to some people you know they might be interested in. If your company produces or sales phones, find a way so some of your followers will have a test-run.

2. Hey, it’s a contest! Go win!

   Organize contests. You don’t have to give away expensive products. For example, BMW was giving away a box of chewing gum. The gum is called “Turbo” and after taking away the cover, you can find pictures with cool cars. Make contests with funny prizes. Give away useful stuff. Give away software licenses, books, whatever you think your followers can find attractive.

3. Huge prizes for greater campaigns

   You can even make a big online campaign to include bloggers in it. They can find out about the contest from Twitter, they should retweet your messages and write blog posts about your contests. Give away a vacation or plane tickets to the guy who sent you the 1,000th buyer, for example.

Do you think these tips were useful? If so, don’t forget to retweet, digg or stumble upon this article. Let everyone now how easy is to use Twitter as a marketing tool and if you had any wonderful experiences with Twitter as a online communication tool, feel free to share it below, using the form to leave a comment.
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Image source: Michael Schechter.