November 27, 2009
Op Ed By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Twitter has quickly become one of the most popular social media tools on the Internet. It is also becoming increasingly common for ecommerce businesses to promote their Twitter accounts through their site and blog. Consumers have come to expect almost all businesses online to have an account so they can follow them for updates. If your online business is not already using Twitter, then now is a good time to sign up, since today is Black Friday and marks the start of the most popular period of the year for shopping. Below we have compiled some useful tips that can help any business on Twitter be more effective and increase their return on investment.
1. Tweeting Useful Industry News
Subscribing to various RSS feeds for news about your industry will allow you a wealth of valuable information you can tweet to your followers. Sharing this useful information will help you build more followers in your niche.
2. Utilize a Business and Personal Profile
It is important to have your own personal profile as well as a business profile on Twitter. Encourage all of your employees to have their own Twitter account as it will help make your network of followers more extensive, which will help your tweets go viral. Use a personal picture on your profile and the business logo on the business account.
3. Build Your Blog Following
You can use widgets on your blog to promote your Twitter feed and use social bookmarking buttons on your blog posts to help increase your traffic. Visitors to your site can then easily share your blog post on Twitter which will result in more followers for your business. You can also hook up the RSS feed of your blog to some of the great Twitter tools so it will automatically tweet each new blog post.
4. Avoid Using Automatic Direct Messages
People who use Twitter want to only deal with genuine people and not robots who auto tweet. Any direct messaging should be unique and not automated to ensure that your business is viewed as authentic.
5. Network More Efficiently at Trade Shows
Most trade shows or events use Twitter either via their account or a hashtag. A hashtag is the # symbol followed by text, like #smx or #adtech. You can also connect with people very quickly without having to take a business card.
6. Manage Your Brand Reputation
Sometimes a consumer may tweet about your business if they have an issue with your product or service. If they have a large following, many others will see this message so you should monitor any mentions of your business and respond quickly if something like this occurs.
7. Connect and Converse With Industry Peers
Twitter is a great social media tool for connecting with other people in your industry. Etsy store owners are very active users and often network and follow other members of the Etsy community. No matter what your online business niche you will find like minded people or businesses on Twitter to connect with.
8. Promote Coupon Codes and Discounts
Once you have built up a decent amount of followers you can start using Twitter as a tool to generate business by tweeting coupon codes or discounts. You can either tweet things that are exclusively promoted only on Twitter or tweet discounts and coupon codes that you also advertise in other channels.
9. Recruit Affiliates For Your Online Store
If you happen to use an ecommerce shopping cart solution that provides an affiliate programs, then you can use Twitter as a social media channel to recruit more publishers to promote your online business. Affiliate marketers use the channel frequently as an organic way to drive traffic to their website, so reach out to them and build a relationship so they will enroll in your affiliate program.
10. Take Advantage of Computer Applications
There are a lot of tools you can use on your computer to be more effective using Twitter and save time. If you want to be more productive, you should use tools like Social Oomph or Tweetlater. Two great desktop applications you can download that will allow you to easily manage multiple accounts and organize your followers are Tweetdeck and Seesmic
11. Reply to All Relevant @ Messages
Once you begin to use Twitter, you want to make sure you do not ignore any real users that send you an @ message. You will get some spam on occasion where they randomly throw in your name in a tweet with a link. These are usually automated tweets not made by real consumers so if you want to double check, just click on their name and look at their recent tweets to see if the things they say look like they are from a regular person. If you see links in all posts or the same type of post over and over about the same thing, then that is most likely not a real consumer.
12. Customer Relationship Management
If you want a great free tool to help with your customer management, then use Twitter to interact with customers as needed. Not all people will want to connect with you via this medium, but some might as they prefer how quick it is to connect to you. Use it to compliment your customer service strategy and it will help you be more effective overall in having a conversation with your customers.
13. Use iPhone, Blackberry, or Android Twitter Apps
The majority of ecommerce store owners use one of the three most popular smart phone brands on the market. If you have an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android phone, then you want to check out all of the available Twitter apps so you can tweet on the go. Many of the desktop applications like Tweetdeck have a corresponding smart phone app so you can stay in synch with all of your Twitter accounts.
14. Thank People Who Give Your Business Positive Mentions
You might be surprised to see how many people will tweet positive things about online businesses that they enjoy. Some consumers like to tweet things that they just purchased or rave when they get a coupon code or discount on a product they buy. Make sure you thank them for mentioning your online business, making a purchase, and welcome them to visit your ecommerce store again.
15. Add Twitter URL to Company Business Cards
Building a large following on Twitter will make it even more beneficial to use as your tweets and will have a larger reach to more people. Make sure to add your Twitter URL on your business cards so that you can connect with as many people as possible that you meet in person at various trade shows, events, or business meetings.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
