If you asked me several months ago what I thought of Twitter I would have said “not much”. But now things are different I see a lot of the potential behind it as a marketing tool. Here are the reasons why I love Twitter:
Twitter is a Testing Ground:
It is a really great thing to be able to see quickly what works and what doesn’t with Tweets. If you use bit.ly to track your shortened URLs, you can see how many people visit the link based on your Tweet. I like testing different word combinations to see what encourages the most people to follow the link. For affiliate marketers this is gold because it a quick way to learn how to elicit a response. Also Twitter has a short memory, bad Tweets forgotten very quickly. Recently, I tried an experiment to find web design companies to partner with. I took 10 different Tweets to get the pitch right but once I did the response was phenomenal. I even took what I learned into the real world and used it when cold calling and it worked as well as it did on Twitter.
Stealing followers
When I first started marketing, I worked really hard trying to build email lists of clients or potential clients. It took forever to build even the smallest list. I thought about the top marketers how they must have amazing lists with awesome connections. The cool thing on Twitter is not only can you build your own list fast but you can easy find the top guys’ lists and steal their followers. I do a quick search on Twitter for SEO and see people with largest lists and know that generally the people following that person are very interested in SEO, so when I follow those people generally they will follow me back because my profile shows that I also teach about SEO. It is such a great way to find new prospects, where most of the work is done for you.
Learning from the best
The amount of information on Twitter is insane. It is easy to find the experts and track their posts. They have to share a lot of tips and secrets in order to maintain their following, so there is a lot of really great free information. If you can get good at sifting through the junk, there’s gold in them thar Tweets. To make this easier use hash tags # and monitoring sites like monitter.com to help.
The Twitter advanced search
The Twitter advanced search (http://search.twitter.com/advanced) is so powerful. Using just proximity function it gives you the ability to listen into conservations that are happening around you. Imagine owning a pizza shop and having the ability to see who is talking about pizza within a five mile radius. Not only does it give you that ability but you could send those same people a direct message, something like “want pizza, visit my shop and I’ll give you a 10% discount if you mention Twitter.” You got to love that.
Constant contact with people who could become clients
As I said before in the days of mailing lists you had to be really careful about sending emails to the subscribers. Old rule of thumb was to email the list about 2 times per month. With Twitter you can send messages daily or even hourly and your followers generally appreciate it. What was considered spamming with email is seen as content with Twitter. If you Tweet a lot, you are seen as a guru rather then a spammer.
Affiliate links see as content (easy money) 
Often I use affiliate links within my Tweets. I find relevant and high quality products that I either use or have used in the past and find out if they have an affiliate option then tweet a review. My followers find it useful and its extra money for me for helping others. I even have people retweeting my posts.
Cross promote
I really like the fact I can Tweet my Youtube videos or blog links. It is like a free press release whenever you need. I think Twitter’s ability to cross-promote services would impress Martha Steward and her concept of synergy. The 140 char teaser is a great way to introduce a video or entice people to read your blog.
Adds on & Twitter applications
There are so many sites and add-ons for Twitter. You could make it a full-time job just keeping up to date on all the different applications. Even just using a few of them can make Twitter so much more powerful. Some of my favorites are: socialoomph.com (for managing new followers direct messages and auto-follow), Tweettank (for building followers), Twoolo (for finding followers), Ping.fm (for distribution of content), Bit.ly (for maximizing the use of 140 chars limits by shortening URL link also gives click tracking), PowerTwitter (a FireFox add-on that adds some nice features to Twitter), and dossy.org/twitter/karma/ (to manage followers).
Google equation
Though it is still not known, I believe it is just a matter of time that Google and Twitter will form some kind of alliance. I see already Google picking up Tweets fast and even indexing content that is only accessible via a Twitter link. Generally, it ranks this Twitter content higher than what could be achieved by using other similar social media sites. Actually, it was my concern over how much importance Google was giving Twitter that leads me to focus my attention on Twitter and to quickly become an expert on it.
But why you do like or hate Twitter…tell me and I’ll Tweet or blog about it.
Any questions about Twitter, please feel free to contact me at 905-417-9470 or by email at allanp73@gmail.com
