Twitter

Twitter is great for business because:

• It’s very straightforward to customise your page so the look and feel is on brand
• Traffic can be tracked (via your site analytics tool) to provide analysis of the impact on your bottom line
• Consumers are now choosing the channel by which they want to be contacted – phone / email / post / twitter / facebook / RSS etc – and opting out of the others. So you need to be available in the channel they want to speak to you in
• It creates another way for consumers to get in contact with you, and via which you can solicit feedback – eg “we’re thinking of expanding our range into platinum jewellery – what do you think?”
• The more engaged with you a customer feels the more likely they are to spend

The key to success on Twitter is:

• Build your follower base – click through rates are considerably lower than on email or PPC marketing so to get a volume of sales you need a volume of followers (DellOutlet has nearly 1.5 million!). There are 2 key ways to grow your follower base (i) make sure your customers know you’re on Twitter – link to it from emails, website, offline marketing etc (ii) find people already on Twitter who are likely to want to hear from you and encourage them to follow you
• Tweet often and with relevance – keeping a flow of useful information flowing is critical to driving traffic to your website. Tweets should include news and information, requests to contribute, and the all important news about what’s happening in your stores and on your website
• Be responsive – do reply to those who contact you, and do pay attention to what they say