Twitter is again generating a tremendous amount of interest from brands and businesses all over the world for good reason.  Growth rates are accelerating, with an average 460,000 accounts created during the month of February 2011 and mobile usage is growing at a staggering rate of 182% during the last calendar year. So how do you market your business on Twitter?  Ten ways for twitter marketing for business!

1) Build a profile on Twitter that resonates with your target audience and don’t be bland and boring. You have 6-10 seconds to garner your target market’s interest – be bold, provocative, creative – faint of heart never won fair lady right?

2) Think of Twitter as a finely tuned competitive analysis engine. Connect your account with your competitors to get an immediate sense for what they are doing right and wrong on this dynamic social media platform. Be aware, it’s a digital quid pro quo world – savvy competitors will be doing the same.

3) Use Twitter as social glue for your brand. Meaning, integrate your Twitter account across all of yours social media platforms and profiles: Friend Feed, LinkedIn, Google Profile, Squidoo Page(s), Facebook, Web Site, etc. The more the better – you driving brand awareness and updating your content across all of these platforms, which will generate marketing ROI moving forward.

4) Twitter is a superb tool for aggregating news or information about any topic that relates to your brand or business. You can mine content via your Twitter account or sign up for and participate in Twitter Chats to learn more about specific topics.

5) Leverage Twitter to drive sales. Think of Twitter as a digital billboard if you will. Integrate a Bit.Ly shortening code for a discounted promotion for your web site and only use this customized link with your Twitter account so you can track your marketing impact.

6) Many businesses don’t understand Twitter’s inherent capabilities as a platform for spreading brand awareness and building relationships. They jump on Twitter and start off broadcasting content to the community and ignore any interaction with their connections. Do this at your peril. People want to engage with your brand via Twitter – meaning, don’t  just shove content down their digital throats. Build and cultivate relationships.

7) Use Twitter as a real time customer relationship management tool by encouraging your customers to connect with you via Twitter and responding to their Tweets.

8) Think of Twitter as a live broadcasting platform. If your hosting an event on or offline use your Twitter account to update your Followers in real time with what is going on.

9) Use Twitter for a brand monitoring tool via Twitter’s Search Engine and use the RSS Feed to automate the process to deliver regular reports on what’s being said about your brand or business on Twitter.

10) Build brand influence and awareness to drive revenue.  Convert your Followers into brand advocates by engaging with, thanking and rewarding them with accolades, discounts or something of value that cements their relationship with your business on Twitter. Influcencers (those with large followings) can amplify your Twitter marketing message and visibility significantly.  Connect and build relationships with them to amplify your message, content and brand awareness.

How is your brand or business leveraging  Twitter to generate Marketing ROI? Love to get your comments below!

If I had a dollar for every time I went somewhere and heard “increase Twitter followers” in a question I’d be living large with the VC “fat cats” on Sand Hill Road. My take on how to increase Twitter Followers:

1. Recognize Twitter has it’s in-place social mores and is very transparent – people do take notice of your activities in this often times tight nit community.
2. Broadcast and curate high quality content - it’s all about what and how you say things.
3. Engage with people and pay it forward by helping others – you’ll generate tremendous ROI.
4. Don’t use slang as it cheapens your brand.
5. Integrate Twitter account across social web: LinkedIn, Blog, FriendFeeed, Web Site – increase Twitter followers by being everywhere your market lives socially.
6. Identify 3-5 competitors, Follow them and see what they are doing right and wrong and remember it’s a quid pro quo world, they will do the same.
7. Use Twitter to broadcast your core content: Blog, Videos, Articles, White Papers.
8. Recognize Twitters in-place social mores: RT, FollowFriday, Mentions, Introductions – this is the lingua franca of Twitter.
9. Be very patient. An increase of Twitter Followers won’t and shouldn’t happen overnight – you want to grow organically. Dip a toe into the water early on and lurk to understand what’s going on.
10. Connect your account to Peer Index and Klout – they are only tools and early on won’t mean much.
11. Slowly move into brand promotion and gently make people aware of your products and services.
12. Complete your bio and change every 2-3 weeks to drive branding and incremental search results.
13. Use Keywords and Hashtags to heighten your content and drive real time search results – 20B searches per month via Twitter represent a strong upside for your brand.
14. Use Twitter for Competitive Analysis by searching on key attributes (keywords/phrases) that relate to your market and/or competitors.
15. Tweet when your target market is awake – if US centric optimum is 9-5 ES. If global rock on a 24/7 schedule.
16. Don’t use an intern to drive this bus (no offense meant to same) – your creating brand awareness on a huge stage and you want some knowledgeable hands on the tiller to increase Twitter Followers.
17. Tweetadder and Social Oomph are great 3rd party apps - Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are defacto account management apps.
18. Curate your Followers if you want a targeted community; if not then Follow all back.
19. Be open to JV and partnerships via this very dynamic community – you can build high quality relationships on Twitter, although takes a while to get established.
20. Don’t do a lot of ego posting: “in Los Altos at the….” “I’m the mayor of Bogota” “I had a 20 year old Pinot…..” – most could care less.
21. Your ReTweets should be 10-15 to 1 of your own Tweets to engender yourself to this community.
22. Increase Twitter Followers by being a resource for information so that others perceive you as being a thought leader.

Increase Twitter Followers: (exec summary) Be real, engage/pay it forward, be authentic and add some sizzle to your Twitter personality!

Twitter can be used by any C Level Exec including a CEO in a number of ways  to drive personal/corporate brand, engage with customers/business partners, add a broader social voice to the company, use social media as a leadership tool to motivate and inspire the company and more. Some caveats:

• Critical to understand Twitter like any social media platform is transparent and your building an online personna that will live forever (to certain extent).

• Good to have some sense for what marketing and/or other stakeholders within the company are doing and saying via social media marketing. Enabling you to amplify and/or reinforce messaging; or not, depending on goals for your account and/or your in-place social media marketing strategy for your company.

• You must understand Twitter’s social mores and follow them, or risk looking foolish.

• Be aware of time commitment required to be effective with Twitter or any social media platform.

• Many savvy Twitter Followers could care less about where your hanging out and what you are doing. Foursquare check ins are boring to say the least, not to mention could be a security risk. Be authentic, engaging and convey a social voice that adds something to the mix.

• Be aware Twitter is a great tool for competitive analysis and your competitors are probably listening to what, when, where and how you say things. Turn about is fair play, follow other executives  in your market niche to get a handle on their activities.

• If you get on Twitter then stick to it. Creating an account and then abandoning will make you and the company look foolish.

• May want to “listen” to the social conversation to get up to speed before jumping into the digital pool. I’d suggest Following other CEOs in your industry to understand what they are and are not doing. Although what others are doing or not doing shouldn’t drive your social branding – at the end of the day your presence on Twitter should be unique and fit your personality.

• Twitter is a great tool for facilitating relationships and making critical introductions. You can easily network strategic partners and/or customers together via Twitter, which might save you time and resources.

• Critical to understand Twitter is an engagement platform, broadcasting PR, wins in the marketplace, accomplishments, etc. are all good. But, you want your Twitter stream to be more than this – engagement will generate good things for your personal and professional brand.

• Don’t worry about Follower accounts. If you follow basic rules of the road via Twitter then Followers will come.

• I can’t comment on Sarbanes-Oxley disclosure and/or SEC regulatory issues that relate to social media, let alone Twitter. But, am sure others on this dynamic platform/forum can address these. I don’t think you can go wrong adhering to what in-house counsel’s directives are for PR and/or other public facing marketing activities.

Basic Productivity Tools for Twitter Optimization:

1. Klout or PeerIndex should be set up for your account, enabling you to track social influence moving forward and giving you a reference point to measure your marketing activities.
2. I use Tweetdeck as my Twitter client of choice. But, HootSuite is certainly very popular. Tweetdeck runs on Adobe air and I find the interface bit easier to use than HootSuite. But, HootSuite incorporates very basic analytics.
3. Set up Google Alerts for your name and company, enabling you to  track what is being said about your corporate and personal brand. These can also be used to help you come up with ideas for content that you want to reference in your Twitter stream.

1) It’s time consuming and marketing ROI is not always apparent – it can take months to really get established, especially if you are B2B focused.

2) Many do not realize you have to connect other social communities to leverage the Twitter content; i.e. LinkedIn, Blog, Squidoo, Facebook, etc.  Treating it solely as a social media content publishing publishing does not leverage avaialble technology, good content distribution and syndication models.

3) Effective Twitter marketing has it’s own social etiquette and rules of the road – many don’t get this. I still see large corporate accounts using Twitter that have no clue about using how/who to Follow, Hashtags, Follow Friday, Follower etiquette, Paying it Forward/ReTweets, Tweetups, integrating images, etc.

4) Users don’t comprehend Twitter marketing is a virtual door opener – I’ve found new clients, strategic partners and others after engaging with them via Twitter and moving to real world connections, including that ancient analog device, the telephone.

5) Lots of  users don’t have the right content strategy – for example,  if you are a SaaS company and targeting a pharmaceutical vertical but only Tweet about the SaaS market, your content strategy will not resonate with the target market.

6) There are hundreds/thousands of applications that now extend Twitter’s platform and usefulness encompassing CRM and lead generation (as examples). Many new Twitter marketing types don’t ever grasp how these apps can extend their branding and drive associated marketing ROI.

7) It’s a fair knock on Twitter about many thinking it’s just a social media platform where people post about lunch, upload Twitpics of events/significant others/dogs/cats – you name it. I branded these folks at “Egnoscenti” via a Blog Post: “Whats Your Twitter Personality.” But, many just think this is all the digital DNA Twitter has………(sadly).

8) Many see Twitter as a broadcast stream only. It’s not, far from it – it’s a viable forum for engaging, granted can be challenging at times dealing with folks with classical attention deficit disorder symptoms,  but you can get traction if you are persistent and creative.

9) Finally, most don’t think of Twitter as a Newsstream, Competitive Analysis & Intelligence tool, Market Research and “finger on the pulse” of vibrant markets tool par excellance. Twitter marketing takes time but it will deliver this capability if you embrace the “digital beast” – although it’s like grabbing a 220 volt line and holding on!!

Connect with me here on Twitter or to hire me to set up a dynamic Twitter Marketing Campaign just click and send here.

Spammers - yep, we got em on Twitter, but I have to say the filterologists at Twitter have done a good job playing the digital cat and mouse game and are keeping spam to a minimum.

Follow Fanatics – these folks follow anyone that has a digital pulse, regardless of the Follower’s profile, content, focus, etc. They are intensely focused on building a Follower base, chasing that endless popularity contest (“I’ve got more than you”) that many think is what determines how cool they are on Twitter. Guy Kawasaki is one of them (“follow everybody”) but we dear readers,  disagree with this strategy.

Content Chummers (think white sharks metaphorically) – they’ll throw anything/everything into their Twitter stream, regardless of it’s being new, fresh or insightful.  The geeky version of the “content chummer” is integrating a Google Feed into their “Tweetstream” to automate their content flow, although few will admit to it.

Twitterholics - spend 24/7/365 on Twitter with a rapid fire delivery in 140 characters that makes the opening scene/conversation in “The Social Network” look L.A. laid back in comparison. When do these people, sleep, eat and have a real life?

Egnoscenti (play on Cognoscenti) – half their time on Twitter is spent repeating at signs (@) messaging to and from with other egonoscenti: personalities/notables/writers/bloggers/celebrities/etc. while they talk about how cool this trip, flavor of the month technology or event was. Yawn………

Corporati -  driving that brand down the social highway, listening to the Tweets from their followers as they search for positive or negative sentiment Tweets and then amplifying or replying and throwing in news about or around the brand. All good…….

Pay It Forwarders – have built a Following on Twitter by engaging with their Followers and including Tweets that help others – you’ll find this characteristic in many “authentic” types as well (see next category).

Authentics – broadcasting and engaging, using a mixture of news, events and bon mots that pique the interests of their Followers, incorporating some pay it forward components and honestly trying to establish themselves in the Twittersphere.

If we missed a personality type then let us know via comments – if you are new to Twitter, check out our Blog Post: “Using Twitter for Business.” Catch us on Twitter via: LinkedMedia – our personality speaks for itself!

Also, Google is starting to integrate hash tag Tweets (posts) and plain vanilla Tweets in their search results with page one rankings in many cases. Our Killer content strategy for Twitter:

1) Use Twit pics to show people what’s going on around you (upload to your Flickr account too).

2) Follow thought leaders in your industry and comment and build on what they are talking about.

3) Don’t sprinkle in lots of quotes  – this is getting mundane for many and old school (Twitter passe if you will).

4) Throw in a personal anecdote to add some personality to your Twitter content – be provocative, remember any “Twitter buzz” is better than none at all.

5) Remember ancient media like magazines and newspapers – read and Tweet about what you think is provocative, insightful or agree or disagree with.

6) Be provocative when you believe in a point you want to share; didn’t like Avatar? Okay, let people know why – maybe you don’t like special effects or think Jim’s already “king of the world” and doesn’t need the “Benjamins.”

7) Take that blood, sweat and tears your putting into your Blog and re tweet it – we like the Tweetable WordPress Plugin.

8) Review products or services that you like/dislike. Case in point, we Tweeted about how much we didn’t like GoDaddy’s services and they “Followed” us with a generic “offer Tweet” – we bleeped em from our account, negative Tweeting in action.

9) Sign up for and use industry newsletters to come up with topics to Tweet about that are timely and/or informative.

10) Write Pithy Headlines that garner attention: “The iPhone That At My Lunch”

11) Timing impacts a killer content strategy for Twitter – most Twitter traffic typically occurs at 4PM Eastern Standard Time here in the US.

12) Include links in your Tweets – studies have indicated these get Re-Tweeted much more frequently.

13) Break News when you can – the 30th Tweet about Google’s earnings isn’t going to garner much attention unless Eric Shcmidt’s mother happens to be Following your Twitter stream.

14) If you can slip in a RickRoll now and then it should elicit some humor or Re Tweets if done well.

Come back later for more killer content strategy for Twitter and check our previous Blog post about Using Twitter for Business

Twitter has its own ecosystem of add on application  that expand the functionality. It’s certainly not like more static traditional media or content – it’s a “monster” that requires constant feeding if you want to be successful, requiring frequent Tweets (updates).

Setting Up a Twitter Business Account

Log on to Twitter and set up an account name. Select e a name that is consistent with your company’s brand and that makes sense – your Twitter Account Name may be as valuable as your Domain Name.

Use keywords in your Bio (description) that may generate traffic for you. Your bio is typically indexed by top tier search engines and can give you a good s/engine ranking for a keyword as a result.

Upload your company logo or a picture of some type - this ads some personality and pick a design from Twitter or hire a third party to do a custom design.

Users are called “Followers” on Twitter and one of your keys to success is generating a large number of Followers who are in your targeted community. You don’t want a large number of people who have no interest in your company, Tweets or business model. Yes, it’s a numbers game to a certain extent, but you want qualified Followers who have some interest in your Tweets (posts) that you can engage.

You can elect to receive all Direct Messages (people you are Following) via email or not and also turn on an “auto responder” type of message that is sent out when Users Follow you, thanking them typically. This is something you will have to experience initially and adjust later, depending on the volume of messages that you receive.

Creating A Twitter Business Account

1. Sign up and download some power tools, we use TweetDeck for multiple accounts for ourselves and our clients and also Bit.Ly for URL shortening (more on this later). If you want to work with images TwitPic is one of the market leaders.
2. Twitter is like buying a new sexy sports car that you fall in love with; but it can be a time sink. Establish ground rules for time you want to spend on it and be disciplined like a Bonsai Gardner – you have to feed and water your Twitter Business account frequently.
3. Don’t just Tweet into space about your daily life, most people don’t care. Yes, add some personality, but the key to success is Tweets (posts) that Inform, Engage, Build Brand and Provide Value or Information (see next post).
4. Engage with the Twitter community – this means ReTweeting or “RT” as it is know (resending other people’s Tweets) and commenting back to them, called Direct Message if they are following you. Send out questions and volunteer to help people and answer other’s questions – it’s truly a virtual community and engaging is a wonderful thing.
5. Speaking of A List Celebs, forget about following or attracting them; your focus needs to be on building a community of people who like what you do and value it. Think about making partners, finding customers or boosters of your brand who will like what you Tweet (post) about.
6. 6. Broaden your message as much as possible to build a viable Twitter for Business account – you want to reach out of your comfort zone and build a big community. It is a numbers game, but “quality” needs to be part of the equation.
7. Be provocative with your messages at times – remember the old PR slogan, all publicity is good publicity – this holds true for Twitter Business Accounts, but don’t libel anyone, as people have been sued for nasty Tweets.
8. Two key ways to measure your success on Twitter – your number of Followers and the volume of RTs (ReTweets), the latter are the highest form of flattery in the Twitter community and give you good feedback loop (or not) on what you are doing. Be sure to thank people immediately for ReTweeting your Tweets – essential etiquette in this community.
9. To grow a Twitter Business Account follow your Competitors and their Followers – they’ve done some homework for you and I will wager many of their Followers may be interested in what you Tweet about as well.
10. Look at top tier brands in your industry/business that are on Twitter and see what and how they Tweet; i.e. Product Promotions, Coupons, Offers, Insights, Entertainment, Images, RTs (ReTweets) and most importantly, how they Engage with the broad Twitter Community.
11. Use Direct Messaging (or DMs in Twitter Speak) to your benefit; you can only Direct Message people who Follow you do want to use this power carefully but consistently when/where it makes sense. Try to be helpful and build a relationship (just like you would offline) with people.
12. Use the @ Sign in front of a User who is in your Twitter Stream (you are Following ) to send a message that goes to them; but, be careful, as this message is “seen” by everyone that is Following you.
13. Follow your Followers aggressively – Twitter has some limitations on how many and how fast, general rule of thumb is stay under adding 50-200 Followers per day. There are several schools of thought on this – some Twitter types get their egos involved and try to have huge numbers of Followers but don’t Follow anyone or hardly anyone in return. This is counter intuitive to a certain extent, as the more people you Follow the more people can Direct Message (DM), which builds community and engagement.
14. Use Twitter Search as a way to find keywords that relate to your business or brand, to find new clients “need content developer,” to find out what is being said about your Company or Products (Customer Relationship Marketing or CRM) and to stay on top of your competitors.
15. No guts, no glory – don’t be afraid to be proactive, throw some humor into your Tweets, be provocative, stir things up. Don’t worry if you misspelled something or make a mistake with a Tweet – it’s not as glaring an error as you might think. As Ross used to say “much better to have arrows in your chest than back” – take some risks.
16. Did we mention spam and junk? Yes, Twitter is starting to pick up all the assorted riff raff that live on/off the web and just like other Online Marketing Services - comes with the territory.  But, not to be too negative, it’s also a wonderful supportive Social Community like any other.

Okay, your ready to use Twitter for Business – to follow us please go to Twitter.com/LinkedMedia – see you at our next TweetUp!