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Washington D.C.-based internet marketing firm Abraham & Harrison and Twitter sponsored a webinar on Thursday afternoon on using Twitter’s micro-blogging platform for small business marketing. Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham & Harrison, and Anamitra Banerji, who is developing Twitter’s business model, discussed their ideas and experiences with strategic internet marketing.
“Twitter is about the triumph of humanity, not the triumph of technology,” said Banerji, delving into examples of companies effectively using Twitter in their marketing strategies. Jetblue and Southwest Airlines both use Twitter for customer support and to offer discounts, which builds relationships and loyalty. He also said that @nakedpizza in New Orleans uses it to promote daily specials. Naked Pizza took their tweeting to the next level when they printed “follow me @naked pizza” on their pizza boxes and rewarded all DMs (Direct Messages) with a coupon. Banerji stressed the community-building feature of Twitter over blasting ad-like tweets to followers.
Chris Abraham talked about prospecting an audience, and advocated starting with people within a company. He urged marketers to “turn out your pockets” of all Gmail contacts lists and follow them. Then, he said, begin build a community targeted for your particular audience.
First, he said to set up TweetLater to automatically follow your followers, to unfollow people who don’t follow you, and most importantly, to resist the temptation to set up an auto welcome DM. Following people who follow you invites a relationship, which builds your company’s image. Unfollowing people who unfollow you helps your following:follower ratio, prunes your following list of people who don’t want a relationship, and gives you a targeted community of followers without fearing the 2000 cap. Also, Abraham said he finds auto DM messages annoying, impersonal and useless.
The webinar gave a few glimpses at tricks that capture target attention. Abraham said that it is wasteful to tweet unless your audience is reading. The peak hours when people read Twitter are 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m., he explained. The voice and tone of the Twitter account is also a key concept. Politeness builds reputation, Abraham said, and thanking everyone who mentions your company on Twitter is a good rule of thumb.
The webinar also covered a few other Twitter features of use:
WeFollow directs you to people you may be interested in following and also allows a company to sign up and attract targeted followers.
Twollow allows you to automatically follow people talking about specific keywords: SEO meets twitter!
HootSuite allows you to send one message to multiple accounts across social media mediums.
Tweetdeck allows you to aggregate your twitter feed according to groups and topics.
TweetBeep alerts you to people talking about keywords.
Creating a hashtag for your company will allow you to track your image and conversations about your company within twitter.
Many companies experimenting with Twitter marketing think of reaching an audience in terms of stealing people’s unwanted attention, like an interruption advertisement. Instead, countered Abraham, the ideal is to focus on moment to moment connections to build real interaction between companies and their customers.
“Building a community is a marathon, not a sprint,” Abraham said as he concluded the webinar.
Tags: anamitra banerji, chris abraham, hashtag, hootsuite, tweetbeep, tweetdeck, tweetlater, Twitter, webinar, wefollow
