Strategic Internet Marketing with Twitter

I posted a recent commentary in a popular internet marketing forum about the use of Twitter as a micro-autoresponder. I received mixed responses, and it's clear that even seasoned internet marketers are divided on whether Twitter has value in internet marketing and social networking as an micro-autoresponder. My intent was not to suggest that Twitter could replace an autoresponder but in the same way Twitter has become known as a micro-blogging platform (that doesn't replace blogging), I believe a similar, complementary use is an opportunity for those who use and don't abuse it's potential as a key internet marketing productivity tool.

WHAT IS AN AUTO-RESPONDER?
For those who may not know what an autoresponder is, it's an automated tool that allows business owners to communicate with prospects and clients via email messages. When a prospect or client joins your list, they confirm permission for you to send them email updates. These updates can be your newsletter, reviews, free ebooks, videos, or audio files that will benefit them or suggested promotions that you would like them to consider purchasing.

You are free to communicate to your list as you deem appropriate and the better your communications, the more likely you are to profit from the reciprocity of your list members who will view you as a trusted expert. The real beauty of autoresponders is, once you set up your messages the first time, any new person who joins your list gets all the messages in their proper sequence in accordance with the timing you establish. An example is below for those who would like an illustration of why every business owner should be using an autoresponder. If you're already familiar with their effectiveness, skip the next paragraph.

For example, let's say that yesterday I created an autoresponder message about how to use autoresponders and which products are the best. I scheduled the message to go out to the people currently on my list as members (they visited my website and signed up to receive mailings and confirmed this fact via email). Today I send a message about a 75% discount on the cost of one of those products if my list members use a special code generated for my exclusive use because of a joint venture deal between us. Tomorrow you join my list. Because of the messages I've already set up, on the first day you join my list, you will automatically receive my first message about autoresponders just as if I had written it specifically on that day. The next day, you will receive my message about the 75% discount, again, automatically with no additional work on my part. Anyone else who joins anytime later will start receiving messages from the first to the last with whatever pre-established frequency I determine--could be everyday could be once a week or longer--it's automatic, personal, and responsive. You're not restricted to your scheduled messages either. At any time you can send a non-recurring broadcast message to everyone on your list regardless of when they joined and they will receive it on the date and time you establish. This is great for holiday messages or time-sensitive offers.

WHY TWITTER MAKES SENSE FOR MARKETERS.
Twitter is an ideal tool for savvy marketers for a number of reasons:

Immediate contact.
Unlike email, which is typically tied to a desktop or notebook computer, text messages are much more direct and immediately accessible via mobile phones. Even those of us who receive our email on our mobile phones are much more likely to receive text message notification before checking our mobile email accounts. Somebody sends you a text, you receive notification of a text, you read the text. This happens millions of times to millions of people every day. Text messages get read more often than not.

Brevity.
Because most text messages are limited to 140 characters, you can't get long-winded. Messages are short and to-the-point. An update about a new blog post or a quick recommended link are all you have space to write about. Brevity also enhances delivery and reading because we know text messages don't take up much of our time.

Frequency.
This is both an advantage and disadvantage of text message social marketing. Text messages are collected together by conversation strings if at all. There aren't many good ways to view all of the messages you sent or received by going to one convenient location. There are some RSS feed tools that can be used but most messages aren't tagged or categorized for easy retrieval or reference so you see them all no matter how unrelated. Depending on how often you receive text messages, you may miss some of the earlier messages or decide that you don't want too receive every message immediately.

CONSIDER THE POWERFUL POSSIBILITIES!
Twitter takes texting to a new level because you can subscribe to those whose text messages you want to receive. As the people you're following make text updates from their phones or via the web, you can choose to read them from some central web or mobile application or you can choose to receive them as they happen.

Think about what this could mean for airline updates on flight status or a text message from your vehicle service provider to let you know your car is ready. What if your local bookstore sent you a message to let you know your favorite author or musician has released a new product that's available to you at a discount price during the next 48 hours? You decide what you want to receive and services like Twitter allow micro-marketing to take place on a personal and immediate level.

Twitter is fantastic for keeping in touch with your customers and prospects or friends. I tweet about my blog updates and interesting things that I find on the 'net that I believe would be of value to my followers. I also have one-on-one conversations in real-time with many who chose to ask direct questions or whose tweets I find especially noteworthy. Others are welcome to follow along and I often get new followers as the result of a string of tweets with current followers.

TWITTER MARKETING ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.
Could marketing via Twitter be abused? Sure, nothing is safe from those who only want to send you junk. Even some of those lists where I have confirmed my acceptance to receive email have had their share of irrelevant garbage sent to me. In those cases, I unsubscribe. If someone who you follow on Twitter starts to send garbage, unfollow that person. If people can be responsible with how they communicate with their audience, the audience chooses to go elsewhere.

Twitter doesn't have scheduling built into the platform. You'll need to use a webtool called Tweetlater to add that functionality. Tweetlater is also free and when combined with Twitter, you can create a micro-autoresponder with an RSS feed (this is a web address that you can provide with a summary of all your scheduled Twitterings) to share brief, immediate marketing messages.

Some twitterers have developed tags for use by others on the system where a common set of characters can be included in a tweet to make it easy to search for posts related to shared interests or subjects. The #blck tag can be used when posting about an African-American topic or to tag the post for others who have search filters set up for this tag. Tags help to sort through the clutter and provide a method for users to pull relevant content from the millions of posts that are submitted each day. By using the relevant tags in your niche, you provide other twitterers even more of an opportunity to find your posts and follow your updates.

START USING TWITTER TO MARKET TODAY!
I've been using these two tools together to provide daily internet marketing tips as an experiment of micro-autoresponder effectiveness. There are various other uses where you can utilize Twitter as a standalone tool or combine it with third party applications to really increase your productivity and add horsepower to your marketing. Read on for some of my favorites.

Create groups of your favorite Twitters, establish search columns that update with every tweet based on your keywords, use the integrated find feature to narrow discussions, view profiles and follow or unfollow other Twitterers. Tweetdeck will provide the organization you need to manage the Twittersphere.

Visit TweetDeck

Schedule tweets for automatic posting at a time that you determine; set up automatic welcome messages for those who follow you and follow them back; set up an RSS feed that is independent from but connected to your Twitter account--all this is possible with SocialOomph. Put it in your internet marketing toolbox and use it often.

Visit SocialOomph.

Twitterfeed works with most popular weblog platforms. Add your blog feed and determine how often, how many and how much of your posts you want to send to Twitter. You can even send posts that are keyword specific to further narrow what is sent as a tweet. A great way to market your weblog on Twitter!

Visit TwitterFeed

Using the powerful integration of Firefox extensions, Twitterbar seamlessly appears within your address bar as a small dot. Click on the dot when you're viewing a website that you want to twitter about and add a few words (Twitterbar will count the characters to let you know how many characters you've used toward the 140 character limit) and instantly send a tweet with the current webpage address.

Visit TwitterBar

This is a great application for email alerts when someone decides to "unfollow" you. Please do not harass those who decide to take an unfollow action. Twitter intentionally chose not include this feature and I would encourage you to use it only to determine what tweet led to an unfollow action.

Visit Qwitter

Use Twellow to search for Twitterers by category, geography, or keyword. Add yourself to the directory for future connections with others who find you.

Visit Twellow.

TwitterCounter allows you to track your following history over time with an easy-to-use graph that only requires your user name. You can also track your status compared to two other Twitterers by adding their user names. It shows both the number of new followers and the number of people who unfollow you on any given day. You can also add a TwitterCounter badge to your website or blog to show others how many followers you have as encouragement to become followers themselves.

Visit TwitterCounter.

Create a free account and receive your own private email address for emailing pictures that you take with your mobile phone. Snap a picture, attach it to an email message, send a note in the subject line and hit send. An automatic link and post are created and sent to Twitter with your photo. Quick and easy.

Visit Twitpic.

Weekly Stats
Graph your Twitter Stats including

* Tweets per hour
* Tweets per month
* Tweet timeline
* Reply statistics

In use by over 100,000 Twitter-folk!

Visit TweetStats.

With TwitterFriends you can ...

* find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you.
* visualize the network of your relevant contacts and their contacts
* see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment
* read some stats about your Twitter account
* take a look at the most conversational Twitterers or those who are posting the most links

Visit TwitterFriends.

Twitter Grader evaluates and scores your Twitter profile based on its algorithms of your rank, followers, following and updates. You are provided with a score out of a possible of 100 points. You can also see the top users in your location and see your rank along with a graph of your user history.

Visit Twitter Grader.

How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven't tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

Visit Twitoria.

Nice application but be warned: it can take a long time if you have a lot of friends/followers.

Visit TweetWheel.

Track the follow status for your friends, following and fans.

Visit FriendOrFollow.

Enter a username (@dacort) to search friends and followers,
or just a keyword to search all bios currently indexed.

Visit TweepSearch.

Visit Twit Robot.

Now you can personalize your Twitter background like never before. The tool below will help you create free Twitter backgrounds that have the same look and feel as those done by professional graphic designers. It's easy to use, and best of all, it's Free! Give it a try!

Visit Free Twitter Designer.