Twitter for Marketing & Business Research: Create Beneficial Relationships

This week my Social Media for Business class is covering the utilization of a micro blogging website called Twitter.  Our professor points out that Twitter can be quite valuable for you as a business marketing tool. 

Contrary to some people’s opinions that Twitter seems like a complete waste of time for teenagers, or that it seems contrite; as they hear about people who are tweeting what they have had for breakfast. We actually need to take another look, think about our brands, and drill down into what is being said by these consumers in their tweets and on their twitter feeds. These tweets can actually provide you a way to listen to people, and to reach out to some industry thought leaders, as well as do some free marketing research.  

Those every day seemingly mundane types of tweets are coming from your current and maybe even more importantly your potential customers. These everyday tweets can become the most valuable information for you as a social marketing communications manager, to create some positive consumer engagement and possibly increase your profits.    

For those who do not know how Twitter works; it is a micro blog where you are limited to only 140 characters or less of written text within each post or tweet (as they are called on Twitter).  Within these tweets you can put any kind of quick or short message:  an advertisement, links to articles or other websites, and even graphic images. You can create a personal or organizational profile and you can follow other people/topic profiles which are of interest to you.  You or they (Twitter profiles) can represent either a business, organization or a single person.  

All tweets are public information except for when you send direct messages (DM) to followers, which are between you and one follower.  Even though these DM’s will not be seen on other peoples (your other followers) Twitter feeds, they will still appear on your profile wall.  When someone uses your @username in their Tweets it is called a “mention.”   If you put @someone’s user name at the very beginning of your tweet – (but not within the middle of the tweet) - it will only be seen by that user and it will also appear on your profile.   

There are design options available for your profile’s appearance to help you develop and complement your branding with other websites and offline.  You can include #hash tags for more search engine optimizations (SEO).  Refer to Twitter help for more details. 

Our class was instructed to use the advanced search tools available to find some related Twitter users or industry related organizations/key people – thought leaders - for our business to follow.  This is an excellent tool for a business owner or manager to use for consumer marketing research also. You can search key terms related to your business needs and find people who are interested and tweeting about them.  

For example my project business the Sabrina Keller Foundation has a fundraising event next week on November 6^th – An eat-to-donate event at Panda Express in San Marcos California. Out of curiosity I searched the key words Chinese Food and Panda Express with the location of Escondido/San Marcos California (in separate searches). I found several users who said they liked Chinese food or were noted for eating at Panda Express. I could either passively follow them (to raise their curiosity about our organization), or aggressively market them for the event next week at Panda Express.  Or perhaps less invasive I could get in on their conversations – perhaps “retweeting” their comments and/or responding with my adding my own mention of the event at Panda Express next week.   

Another marketing strategy to adopt on Twitter is to find people or organizations related to your industry or brands and “follow” them - sometimes called “Influencers.” Hopefully you will be able to develop relationships with them online by creating and joining their discussions through Twitter over time.  

I searched the Key word terms “sudden cardiac arrest” and found several related organizations for the Sabrina Keller Foundation to follow including SADS – The National Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome Foundation.   The group Parents Heart Watch, and another called Heartfelt Cardiac Projects - which is an organization in Orange County that holds regular screening events for adolescents and teens to get genetically tested for SADS related disease.  These are just a few of the heart health related organizations I found with these three words alone.  I searched for “children’s health” and I found Rady Children’s Hospital to follow also.  

Twitter even started to suggest some organizations to follow as it noticed my patterns for selecting them. After choosing some local media outlets that I thought might be good candidates to reach more people on topics about heart health and health care in general. I had searched the key terms “San Diego,” “health,” and “media” - and the results gave me a large list of local health organizations including Blue Cross and several not so related topics for me, but it also gave me PBS “woman’s health” listed as second.  Upon choosing that organization to follow I was suggested by Twitter to Follow CBS Channel 8, NBC 7, the San Diego Tribune and several others.  

I also searched the key terms Girl Scouts and followed the national organizations profile as well as the local San Diego and Escondido, San Marcos Chapters.  As they are major stakeholders in the Sabrina Keller Foundations goals - as we are raising scholarship monies for this particular group.

There are other tools available to utilize for organizing your marketing efforts on Twitter as well, including a list feature, which you can use to manage and organize or to separate those people you follow into identifiable groups. Such as “girl scouts” or “Chinese food lovers” etc.  That way you can easily find these people or organizations to target your marketing efforts daily as needed. 

My class professor also recommended using Twitter for finding content ideas either for retweeting or to use elsewhere like on Facebook.  One of the organizations you may be following might have a good article or some good ideas to learn from, and you can use them elsewhere to promote your business and better reach your business goals.