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50 Twitter Tips for Conversion

So here it is: Twit­ter.  It’s every­where being hyped as the next great thing, but what can it do for your business?

Like any emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy the uses are some­what open ended and there are still many ques­tions.
A few things are absolutely certain:

1. Twit­ter offers you an oppor­tu­nity to engage a large num­ber of peo­ple who are com­fort­able online. Which means they will either pur­chase online or talk a lot online.
2. Twit­ter is grow­ing dra­mat­i­cally. How long that growth will last is up for debate but the real­ity is that it is here now and bar­ri­ers to entry are very low. It’s free and only requires and strat­egy which is embracing.
3. Twit­ter can ben­e­fit your com­pany through cus­tomer ser­vice, prod­uct pro­mo­tion, mar­ket­ing and PR just to name a few.

I’ve put this guide together to get you started on your Twit­ter cam­paign and strat­egy. It is our hope that you find this guide use­ful. Please for­ward this to your friends, col­leagues and relatives!

Also I’m look­ing for­ward to your com­ments, addi­tions, thoughts, and gen­eral input on any of this.

50 TWITTER TIPS FOR CONVERSION

1. Engage your fol­low­ers. Sim­ply throw­ing pro­mo­tional offers at peo­ple will only add to the white noise on Twit­ter and you will not stand out. Send @ replies, help out, dis­cuss and be real.
2. Ref­er­ence your site fre­quently. You don’t even need to always ref­er­ence your newest con­tent, ref­er­ence your most use­ful con­tent. With the stream of mes­sages on Twit­ter. There is noth­ing wrong with referencing.
3. Cre­ate a cus­tom Twit­ter land­ing page and direct users there. Use the KISS approach, one offer specif­i­cally for Twit­ter users, you’ll notice a huge difference.
4. Do not be afraid to unfol­low peo­ple who are adding to your white noise. Like any list you want to tar­get your audi­ence, some affil­i­ate mar­keters out there will only Tweet offers and junk. Lose them.
5. ReTweet valu­able tweets from your fol­low­ers. This is a huge thing and extremely com­ple­men­tary. I find on my lists that there are about 5% if the users that I ReTweet mul­ti­ple times. Is that a new rule 95/5? 95% of your ReTweets come from 5% of your users.
6. Ask your users ques­tions. There are two ways to do it. Infor­mally by sim­ply throw­ing it out there and ask­ing for a response. For­mally by using Twt­Poll, which will track responses. Either way ask engag­ing ques­tions of your users, some­thing that will incite debate and opinion.
7. Exclu­sive offers. When I say exclu­sive I mean exclu­sive, don’t just regur­gi­tate another offer, make it exclu­sive and time lim­ited to Twit­ter users oth­er­wise you risk being in the “white noise” category.
8. Incen­tives for fol­low­ers. We effec­tively use $50 Cash Cards for the nth Twit­ter fol­lower for doing noth­ing more than sim­ply fol­low­ing. We do it every thou­sand fol­low­ers but pick your met­ric and follow-up on it.
9. Mon­i­tor Twit­ter Search. You would be amazed at how many active dis­cus­sions you can miss if you don’t watch the buzz. Get in there!
10. Join Twit­ter Busi­ness Direc­to­ries. Two good exam­ples are WeFollow.com and Twellow.com, add your­self to rel­e­vant cat­e­gories and search out poten­tial leads on a reg­u­lar basis.
11. Engage a key indi­vid­ual in the Twit­ter dia­log. A good strat­egy is join­ing your CEO’s pro­file to your cor­po­rate pro­file. Not only will you gain a wider fol­low­ing, you’ll have the abil­ity to chan­nel directly to your “go to guy (or girl)”.
12. Fol­low PR and News Sources. You’ll cre­ate a direct dia­log to the peo­ple who can get your mes­sage out there.
13. Engage Anger. If you’re a busi­ness there is likely some­one ready get annoyed with you. Don’t shy away from them, embrace and com­mu­ni­cate them, you may have your next great advo­cate out there scream­ing good things about you.
14. Live Updates from Events or Con­fer­ences. This will cre­ate buzz and excite­ment from your user base. No one cares if “it’s a hot day here in Glen­dale Ari­zona” but they might care about “The boss just gave a great tip on our newest prod­uct release”.
15. Fol­low peo­ple. Alot. I can’t stress this enough. Some peo­ple think it is a badge of honor to have sig­nif­i­cantly more peo­ple fol­low­ing you than you fol­low. Not true. What you are really say­ing is I want a one way con­ver­sa­tion, not very social at all.
16. Fig­ure out “Social Engage­ment”. How do you engage social media? You be social and engage. Why many peo­ple don’t under­stand this I will never know.
17. Twit­ter about your com­pe­ti­tion. Why not? Even link to them, if you are con­fi­dent in your prod­uct then you have an oppor­tu­nity to show the world you have the supe­rior product.
18. Com­ple­ment your com­pe­ti­tion. When your com­peti­tors do some­thing right then do not shy away from it. Give them a shout out. It shows strength and confidence.
19. Send use­ful links which may not be directly related to your busi­ness. It could be a news event or some­thing you found use­ful. Peo­ple appre­ci­ate tips and advice.
20. Cre­ate a cus­tom back­ground for your Twit­ter page with your con­tact infor­ma­tion. You would be amazed at how many peo­ple will reach out to you directly. Check out the Hon­ey­pot Mar­ket­ing Twit­ter page, noth­ing fancy but it works.
21. Add your Twit­ter pro­file to your email sig­na­ture. Sounds basic enough but emails get passed around quite a bit.
22. Add Twit­ter­Counter and Twit­ter badges to your site. Not rocket sci­ence but highly effec­tive. Inter­net mar­ket­ing is a two way street, go both ways.
23. Engage in polar­iz­ing dis­cus­sion. Is @oprah adding noth­ing of value? Tell her, it will polar­ize but it will get you engaged.
24. Auto Fol­low peo­ple who fol­low you. I use Tweetlater.com to auto­mate this process but it is (to me) a com­mon cour­tesy and I just think it works well, saves a ton of time too. You can purge lists once a month or so to keep your list up to date.
25. Pro­vide cus­tomer sup­port. What­ever you do or sell, peo­ple will have a prob­lem. Uti­liz­ing Twit­ter as a rapid response tool is incred­i­bly effec­tive and gen­er­ally peo­ple only need a minor tip to get on track.
26. Cre­ate a daily digest of your tweets for your blog. This not only incites the search engines into rank­ing you quickly (more cus­tomers!) but it pro­vides a his­tory and a sense that your com­pany has fully engaged the com­mu­nity. That’s a good thing right?
27. Twit­ter your knowl­edge. No mat­ter who you are and what you know, your back­ground and expe­ri­ence will help those and could posi­tion you as a thought leader. Cheesy term but true. You’ll become an expert and peo­ple will respect that and as such respect your company.
28. Stay on Tar­get. You want to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple and lead them to and end goal. Never lose sight of that. Sketch out your con­ver­sion path (what­ever it might be) and make sure you are achiev­ing that goal. You will be sur­prised at how quickly results will happen.
29. Don’t nec­es­sar­ily try to sell “stuff”. Sell­ing “things” may or may not work for you on Twit­ter. Be real­is­tic about your end goal, brand­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, lead gen­er­a­tion. Gen­er­ally using Twit­ter as a con­duit makes it a great lead gen­er­a­tor, not a closer.
30. Talk about how your prod­uct helped a cus­tomer. If they are on Twit­ter ask them to par­tic­i­pate in the dia­log and back you up. Bring­ing it full cir­cle will pro­vide you incred­i­ble benefits.
31. Cre­ate a Twit­ter Inter­view. I refuse to engage in the man­gling of the Eng­lish lan­guage for the pur­poses of brand­ing Twit­ter. Some peo­ple call them Twin­ter­views — hor­ri­ble. Set up a series of 10–15 ques­tions and ask the your inter­vie­wee to @ reply them. You can even ask your fol­low­ers to DM you spe­cific open ques­tions. Works like a charm.
32. Ask peo­ple to ReTweet but not every­day. Ask­ing peo­ple to ReTweet directly on occa­sion will indi­cate that this is an impor­tant mes­sage. With a good fol­low­ing you’ll get help.
33. Don’t be afraid to go offline. Some­times you can’t engage com­pletely on Twit­ter so take it to phone, email or face to face (if pos­si­ble). Only so much can be com­mu­ni­cated in 140 characters.
34. Ask your fol­low­ers what they think of your offers. It’s a form of Direct Mar­ket Research. Exam­ple: “Would you rather get 20% off or a free movie pass for two? Let us know!”.
35. Use Twit­Pic. Post pic­tures of your events, office, peo­ple in your office. Be human! No likes a mar­ket­ing driod Twit­ter pro­file. You can *really* con­nect with peo­ple by being just like every­one else.
36. Tweet com­pany events. Did Joy in Account­ing just have her first child? Tell every­one about it and how happy you all are for her. Unless of course your com­pany is a sweat­shop, which I highly doubt it is.
37. Tweet the suc­cess of your cus­tomers. If you are B2B Con­grat­u­late your clients on a suc­cess­ful promo or cam­paign. Spread the love.
38. Don’t insult peo­ple. Unless this your per­sonal account and you’ll do what­ever you want then fine. But never insult a client or com­peti­tor, you’ll look bad for ages and you can dam­age your own future rep­u­ta­tion. Trust me there can be an idiot fac­tor on Twit­ter and it can be dif­fi­cult some­times. I know I’ve lashed out a few times on my per­sonal account. Oopsie.
39. Con­duct Web­site Test­ing. If you have a new promo or land­ing page ask your users which they like bet­ter. You are after all try­ing to appeal to them are you not?
40. Define your objec­tives. I have alluded to it ear­lier but make sure every­one in your com­pany under­stands what you are try­ing to do. Maybe directly sell­ing your prod­uct won’t be suc­cess­ful but sell­ing your ser­vice will be.
41. Test, test, test. Twit­ter is an emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy; to be hon­est no one quite knows what to do with it just yet. That makes test­ing your mes­sage and con­ver­sion flow critical.
42. Don’t be afraid to change course. Things change and you should change with them, if you found a sweet spot for com­mu­ni­ca­tion or sales try to move in that direc­tion with­out being scared to do so.
43. Auto­mate your blog and Twit­ter accounts in both direc­tions. We love Word­press so it’s a no brainer for us. Every post gets an auto­matic tweet which will drive your cus­tomers to you. Simple.
44. Inte­grate Twit­ter into your online strat­egy. We are huge pro­po­nents of inte­grated mar­ket­ing. That includes Tra­di­tional and Emerg­ing Mar­ket­ing with the same mes­sage. Tip: when going online don’t change the mes­sage just go a bit more grass roots style.
45. Tell peo­ple who exactly is Tweet­ing. You may have a cor­po­rate pro­file like http://twit­ter.com/honeypot_mkting but start out by say­ing “Morn­ing All, @dannomatic is here this morn­ing”. Peo­ple like to know who you are and will be far more will­ing to engage you.
46. Cre­ate a cor­po­rate Twit­ter Meetup. Admit­tedly this is a bit nerdy but it doesn’t have to be. Have an open house meet­ing to invite your Twit­ter fol­low­ers to the office, then Tweet about it. Buzz is amazing.
47. Cre­ate time lim­ited pro­mo­tions and update it on Twit­ter. Real and effec­tive time lim­ited pro­mo­tions could include giv­ing out a free whitepa­per or case study for a lim­ited time. Link via DM to a PDF but only keep access open for a few hours. When it’s over redi­rect the link to a thank you and reg­is­tra­tion for email down­load. Then you’ll cap­ture the traf­fic, which is bound to hap­pen after time has expired.
48. Cre­ate a Twit­ter only con­test. Be cre­ative but run it exclu­sively on Twit­ter and give away your prod­uct as priz­ing. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just fun.
49. Cre­ate a tone of help­ful infor­ma­tion. Exam­ple: “Did you know that the Magic Bul­let can slice and dice? Check out the top fea­tures here…” and link to a blog post or infor­ma­tion sheet — prod­uct knowl­edge is impor­tant and leads to the con­ver­sion or sale.
50. Deep link peo­ple into your web­site and blog. You’ve likely invested heav­ily in that glitzy shiny web­site. Point out use­ful com­pany infor­ma­tion, employee pro­files, prod­uct infor­ma­tion, review, and news. It sur­prises us to see Twit­ter being used to link to one page on a web­site. Deep link­ing encour­ages peo­ple to dig deep into your site, increas­ing the oppor­tu­nity for the conversion.

Related posts:

1. Using Stum­ble­Upon Effectively

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