Twitter has long outgrown the original intent of its early adopters, establishing relationships with people by answering the question, “What are you doing?”
My Twitter participation from the very beginning has been from a new business perspective. How to use this new communication’s tool for ad agency new business. The way that I use it has been different than most. At times I receive some criticism from some early adopters of Twitter that I’m not using it correctly.
One of the early Twitter rules: Do not repeat your Tweets.
Well, I’m proud to say that I never followed that rule. Now others are starting to see the light. I recently read a post by social media mega star, Guy Kawasaki, How to Drive Traffic with Repeat Tweets. Guy shares an experiment he conducted re-tweeting some of his posts that was hugely successful … he advises:
“Based on these experiences, I encourage you to break all the “rules” that you’ve heard about social media and make your own. Like my friends from Alaska tell me, unless you’re the lead dogma, the view never changes.”
This past month I had 25,000+ page views to Fuel Lines. Twitter generated more traffic to my blog than any other tool I’ve used. Here’s how I use repeat Tweets:
Create a Twitter Schedule
I actually create a “twitter media schedule” for over 370 of my blog post using an Excel spread sheet. I assign 168 of these posts a specific day and time to publish on Twitter. I publish a different post every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. For example a post that is published on Thursday at 2:30 PM, will post every Thursday at that time until I rotate it to a different day/time placement or take it out of the rotating schedule.
Usually the only complaint that I will receive will be from a few of those that are following less than 200 people. You will get some that will unfollow. I keep a check on unfollowers using a tool called SocialToo and receive an email generated daily report.
Use Twitter tool: Social Oomph (formally known as Tweetlater)
Using my twitter media schedule I add each post to Social Oomph and select a day/time for the post to publish and the recurrence to once a week. Social Oomph has a tool to shorten the URL so basically I’m publishing a post title and tiny URL so that it stays within Twitter’s 140 character limit. Almost all of my post titles identify my target audience so that they know the post is a resource of interest to them and can also be found through search.
Whenever I add a new post to my blog I will also post it immediately to Twitter, include it in my Twitter Schedule and add it to Social Oomph (Tweetlater).
Keep check of your blog analytics to see what posts are trending higher then periodically, usually once a quarter, add your higher trending posts to Twitter’s “prime-time” between 11 am and 3 pm so they will get more exposure.
I publish round the clock because of the traffic that can be generated from other time zones. Along with a large West Coast following I’ have a following and traffic to my blog from places like Brazil, England and Tokyo.
The time and effort that goes into creating a single blog posts can provide a great return on your investment. Blog posts that I’ve written 2 years ago continue to generate traffic back to my blog.
For Twitter to have real value from a new business perspective for ad agencies, you must have a clear objective and follow a simple formula for use.
To reach my objective to my blog’s traffic and exposing it to a new but targeted audience, I’ve followed Angela Maiers 70-20-10 Twitter Engagement Formula.
70 to 80% of my “Twittertime” is spent sharing helpful information for ad agency new business with my audience. I do this in two ways:
- I share lots of information from my online reading that I think will be of help to my audience. I’m able to use some tools such as TwitThis that I’ve placed in my browser bar. When I come across a good article that I think will be of help all I have to do is click on TwitThis and automatically post the article title and tiny URL into my Twitter account.
- I also share the content from my FUEL LINES blog. Repeating older posts, that are still useful, have new life. The best posts are often re-tweeted and exposed to new networks of people.
Twitter is more than a fad. It is a valuable marketing tool. The searchability of Twitter already have some saying that it can become even more valuable than Google. Twitter tools such as Social Oomph make it priceless.
Read more on how I use Twitter for new business: A Simple Twitter Formula for Ad Agency New Business
Additional articles that may be of interest:
- Twitter 101 for Ad Agency New Business
- Ad Agencies: Useful In-Depth Data on How Twitter is Being Used
- Socially Benefitting from My Twitter Habits
