This article will become my 500th tweet on my primary twitter profile @mikeasaunders. A rather momentous occasion as I have found it to be a pivotal area of my Social Media marketing.
Twitter has been very slow to take off in South Africa which begs the question ‘what value is there in twitter for South African social media campaigns?’
I believe that would depend entirely on what you goals are for your campaign. Who is your target market and what technologies are they comfortable using. South African twitter users are primarily tech savvy individuals. There would be very little benefit promoting soap through a twitter channel however a software product may achieve a greater level of success.
In my analysis of this marketing medium I have noticed a few fundamental ingredients to setting up a twitter profile that achieves it goals. The fundamentals have been evident in almost every twitter profile I have seen succeed. Using these fundamentals to your advantage could see your following grow and goals realised.
Focus Focus Focus
This first is the simplest concept in marketing and yet the one that people struggle the most with. Focus! Your product or service offers something unique to someone and that USP is what carves its place into the hearts of your consumers. Give you Twitter profile the same USP and let it elbow its way into the minds of people and become valuable to them. Good marketers know that you must promote the features of a product that matter most to your target market and you need to use a channel that can communicate those features the best.
I would like to use online software as an example here,specifically a company called TwitterFeed. @twfeed uses it profile to promote the technical updates of its software service to its clients. This give confidence in their users that should there be any complications in the service offered they will be updated on the progress via Twitter. In addition to this technical update service @twfeed also provides basic technical support to its clients. In fact it seems that the twitter profile has become a great technical support platform for TwitterFeed.
Twitter feed have focused their profile on providing a service to its clients around technical support. It does not use the profile to talk about its business objectives, company strategies, latest press and company news. Focus has given the @twfeed profile valuable leverage in the hearts of its clients.
Here are a few other examples of creative focused profiles:
Bushmills are currently running a pub quiz on twitter
Ashton Kutcher has focused on engaging his fans on a more personal level
Hayibo simply use twitter to exited their already focused satirical humor
Develop processes to maintain your profile
Ensure that you have a process that will keep the focus of your profile. In the case of @mikeasaunders if I stop updating the profile with links and articles about South African Social Media then I have stopped serving my followers. They have placed a degree of trust in me to provide them direction or news about this topic. If my processes fail then my brand fails.
I would suggest the following in setting up your processes:
- Decide who is going to update the profile: This person should be an internet savvy individual who will enjoy updating the profile. The more enjoyment the more activity. Also make sure that your organisation trusts this person to communicate to the public on behalf of your company because the person updating your profile becomes a company ambassador to the public.
- Put that person into the information loop: Whoever runs your twitter profile needs to be in the communication mix, without information there is nothing to communicate. This can be done by sending them the industry trade magazine, educating them on the interesting websites to subscribe to and most importantly making sure that they become avid readers of your company blog or website.
- Go Mobile: Twitters main attraction is that you can tweet from anywhere. Empower you ‘twits’ with the knowledge and technology to update the profile via SMS or cellphone applications. This way it does not become as time consuming as it can potentially be and the profile is more accessible in a time of need.
- Syndicate: Do you have an RSS feed? If not, its time you started thinking about getting one setup. An RSS feed is a subscription feed that can promote your company new or blog to the internet effortlessly. There are a number of ways that you can funnel your RSS feed to update your twitter profile. Meaning that when your blog updates – your twitter profile updates! This is a huge time saver and a great way to drive traffic to your website.
I would love to here your thoughts on twitter in South Africa! Feel free to comment below.
