Archive for the ‘Twitter marketing’ Category:
Six ways Twitter can make money
A web 2.0-sized boatload of buzz has surrounded Twitter, the addictive service that allows its users to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The service has made appearances in everything from your friend’s blog to the New York Times, and everyone seems jazzed about how fun tweeting is. While we’re all having a good time, however, its creators, Obvious, keep hinting at how many practical uses they have up their sleeve for Twitter. Even though they haven’t revealed any of their cards just yet, the rest of us are left wondering: how is such a seemingly frivolous service going to make money?
As a user who has taken the Twitter pill hook, line and sinker, I’ve been mulling this question for some time now. I came up with a few strategies, but then I figured: why not run them by the Twitter crew themselves? The least they could say was ‘no comment,’ but fortunately Evan Williams, one of Obvious and Twitter’s founders, responded with a few of his own. Read on for my attempts at making Twitter some money (I’m waiting for my job offer Ev), as well as some choice words and ideas of his own from Evan.
- Twitter Pro – This is one obvious move. Twitter Pro could be a paid service that offers more features, unlimited tweets vs. a ‘standard’ account that receive a daily/weekly limit. It could also include a mobile phone/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry client with more robust tweeting/following tools that use the web to transmit tweets, avoiding those nasty SMS charges. It could also allow tweeting pics and videos from around the web with a Tumblr-like K.I.S.S. philosophy.
- Merchandise – A while back (though I admittedly can’t find a link right now), Evan said merch was a big revenue generator for Blogger, and Twitter has worlds more buzz surrounding it right now. Heck, they even rolled out a small batch of shirts for SXSW, over which users seemed to be pretty excited. As ready as we may be to plunk down some cash for the privilege of using a t-shirt to tell people where we waste most of our time, Ev directly replied to this one: “RE: merchandise – It was, at one time, a noticeable part of Blogger’s revenue, but that’s when Blogger was just me, scraping by; my guess is it wouldn’t make a blip in Twitter’s costs today. Unless we figured out how to be a trendy new apparel brand.” Sorry everyone, but it sounds like apparel isn’t exactly on their list of features to roll out in the next update.
- Twitter for Business a l? Google Apps – Customized, secure software that businesses can run on their own intranet. BlackBerry and WinMo clients are a more apparent option here. Obviously, this could become tremendously useful if Twitter built in some hooks that work like Stikkit and Google Calendar, allowing employees to easily tweet appointments and tasks to a centralized PIM system, and automatically be subscribed to their team’s tweets without any extra effort on their part.
- Twitter Forums, ad-supported – Finally, an innovation brought to the aging discussion forum format. Sort of a Twitter approach to Yahoo! Answers, allowing users to post questions and follow threads they’re interested in, with the Twitter format forcing everyone to keep things simple and on-topic. Instead of ads, this could also possibly be just for Pro customers. One of the catches here is that Twitter users only see tweets from people they are following. When submitting a question to a Twitter Forum, you would be able to see all replies to the question, even the ones from users you’ve never met and aren’t following.
Evan didn’t let me have all the fun with brainstorming, however, and he offered two of his own ideas which I would assume are a good bet the company is working on, since he shared them with this lowly blogger:
Two more-straightforward ideas: 1) Ads on the site. We have a little AdSense on there now, but we haven’t really tried. As the traffic grows, some tasteful sponsorships might be sellable. 2) Charging companies who are using it for marketing or other commercial purposes. If an organization finds Twitter to be a valuable communication tool with their customers/constituents/etc — especially if we’re sending lots of SMS’s for them, which cost us money — it seems viable to make an offering around that.
So there you have it: six ways Twitter can make money, two of which are straight from the lion’s mouth. Judging from the sheer magnitude of buzz surrounding the recently-incorporated company, I wouldn’t be surprised if these six are but a drop in the bucket. There’s good news for those who fear change, however: no matter which way Twitter decides to start paying their exponentially growing bandwidth bills, Evan assured me that: “Our top concern when it comes to monetization will be to do so in a way that does not negatively impact users.” Good show guys; your users will appreciate being able to spend their time tweeting about how they’re spending their time, with the least amount of distraction.
Make money with Twitter – the best way
Anyway the whole point of doing this post is to highlight some of the key monetization elements that an individual can explore using twitter. I assume you have the basic knowledge of what twitter is and how it works, so I will directly deep into some ideas which can make you earn money from your twitter.
- Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.
- Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
- Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.
It works pretty much like niche marketing because, say if you are an Internet Marketer, It is very likely that most of your followers in Twitter are also from the same area which is why they have ‘followed’ you in the first place.
- Affiliate Links – If you are recommending a Product or a Service to your followers, you can always embed your affiliate link in your tweet. (e.g. Using a service like TinyUrl.com)
- Sales Pages – Instead of taking your followers to another website using your affiliate link, you might just want to promote your own product & services and sell them directly via your sales / landing page.
This is an area where every one can really look into. For instance say when one of your followers is asking for suggestion to choose a web host, you can always suggest him the best one from your experience but at the same time use your affiliate link which can earn you some quick cash.
- Product – You can do a paid review about a particular product (e.g. Internet Marketing software)
- Services – You can do a paid review about services that your advertiser offers. (E.g. SEO Services, Web Hosting Services etc.)
- People – You can also do a paid review about people. For instance, maybe you can review someone’s web design skills, or you may promote someone’s ‘twitter’ account for instance.
- Feedback – Example – “What New features would you like to see in Product X”?
- Brand Awareness– Example- “Describe product X in 140 Characters” or “Tell us why you like product X within 140 Characters”. The best answer can be given a cool prize sponsored by the advertiser.
How to promote your company, product or prand on Twitter
There are many newbies who are using Twitter the wrong way to promote “stuff”. These users actually lower the value to all other Twitter users by being of low value and generally being a nuisance by adding irrelevant “noise” to the Twitter feed.
Eventually, these accounts will be permanently blocked by Twitter users, removed by Twitter if a spammer account is reported and flagged by 3rd party spam busters like TwitChuck.
Now I suspect that a lot of these users are not really hardcore spammers (although there are those too). But rather, people who don’t understand how Twitter works and have no empathy for the people who mutually follow them.
If you want to promote your business or product on Twitter, here are some guidelines on how to do it professionally and ethically:
1. Age of your account.
Do not promote any business or product unless your account is at least 6 months old. Additionally, you should only promote a product that is relevant to your followers. Which brings us to rule 2.2. Build a target audience per Twitter account.
You should follow and friend users with similar interests. You should build up goodwill by offering useful content that is relevant to the product you are promoting. Use a separate Twitter account if you are involved in more than 1 market niche.3. Have a balanced ratio of friends and followers (unless you are a mega celebrity).
Spammers tend to use software scripts or robots to add thousands of followers in the hope that they will follow back. If their Tweets have no value, many people will “Unfollow” them leaving an unbalanced ratio of friends and followers. Meaning, the number of people they follow is significantly more than the number of people who follow them.4. Join the conversation.
Another self-centered strategy that spammers use is to just have a few posts about their product or service and then just focus on adding friends and followers instead of actually joining the conversation. Communicate. Retweet good tweets (see my post on How to Retweet Like a Pro). Reply to direct messages. Join conversations using the #tag. Mention others in your tweets.5. Avoid the hard sell terms
Don’t use a lot of spam terms like “free”, “join”, “subscribe”, “viagra”…etc. These will get flagged.
Make money with Twitter
So we have been going on many forums and people are giving the same old fashioned way of making money by making 100’s of accounts and using automation and making money. I honestly don’t know how many people are really successful because not many are.
It’s literally spamming Twitter, don’t know how people expect to say that they are having crazy conversion rates because everyone who is following you currently is only following you the same reason you are following them to make money or gain followers they could care less about the products you are offering they just care about their follow counts and making money.
How you should use Twitter? You Should Treat your Twitter account the same way you treat your Email List. You are not going to spam the crap out of people are you? You should build and engage with your followers and interact with them.
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What is Twitter Marketing ?
With rising advertising costs and lower spending more and more people are using Twitter Marketing as an inexpensive and effective means of marketing themselves. Twitter is more than a social platform for keeping up to date with what your friends are up to. It helps you find people who are potential clients for your business of services.
Twitter can be used in several ways to market your business or service. A good way to use Twitter is through the search tool. Here one can find other business or services which share common ground. You can use either the basic search wherein all keywords entered will produce results or the advanced search feature which allows you to search for very specific things. Likes, dislikes, people, words and dates can all be found using the advanced search feature.
Twitter can also be used to network. This means you can search for other people and entities that share your business ambitions and goals, as well as your social and political ideas. Some of these people are in need of your special services or would like to see what you have for sale.
You can promote yourself or your business on Twitter. Since you do not have unlimited space, you don’t have to spend a lot of time coming up with tempting ideas and don’t have to use a lot of fluffy words. You can simply state your case to the world.
Using Twitter you can instantly post tweets, which are immediately received by followers for real time conversations. This is useful if you have something new to sell that you just love, or just received some good information that you can use in your service.
With Twitter Marketing, you can reach thousands of potential customers who are searching for your products or abilities to fill their specific needs. If you just found the best soap in the world, go ahead and tweet about it.
Although “Tweets” are limited to only 140 characters there is a lot of specific information that can be given while eliminating the need for too much babbling. This way you don’t have to come up with a lot of flowery language to embellish your tweet. Also, one can add an advertisement after 140 character message, in any blank space. One can even post direct advertisements in their twitter pages.
While Twellow searches for all subscribers, Twellow categories allows searches for subscribers based on their interests. If your client likes pink poodles, let him know you like them too.
Twellowhood gives the demographic information of people who subscribe to it in the US and Canada. It gives maps and zooms, allowing people to connect by region. This is a great thing to have access to if you live in a snow belt and just happen to own a snow plowing service.
For anyone interested in more exposure with very limited costs, the development of Twitter Marketing is an effective tool which should be used by anyone who wants to promote his business or himself.
