Giving Away the Good Stuff

Technology has given companies targeted reach to consumers they never had before, but it has also made it easy for potential customers to ignore them.  Companies are trying to prove they are different while connecting with potential leads that matter.

Content Marketing has been successfully utilized since 1895 and provides a way for a company to demonstrate it is an industry thought leader by delivering helpful, free content to its current and potential customers.  White papers, eBooks, and infographics are current examples of content marketing and they do a wonderful job of providing value, creating leads, and giving calls to action, but they miss the mark in one place - human touch.

A TweetChat allows you to engage with and listen to many people at once while documenting the conversations and capturing contact information. Idea-share, focus groups, and feedback sessions: it’s all about conversation.  Lead the conversation and answer questions: you are able to provide insight and promote your brand without mentioning it.  Because your twitter profile is your mini-resume, those who you exchange information with are able to see who you are and even click on a link to your personal or company's website.

As with any content marketing vehicle, a tweetchat takes time to organize and promote, but because they are real-time, they allow true connections and provide these potential customers insight to you and your brand.

As always, I look forward to your feedback.

Cheers,

Toby

Twitter My Way

If you believe twitter is for telling others you are “sitting on the patio,” get ready to learn something. These are 4 ways I use my 140 characters.

Learn
We all love to consume information and the internet provides a most awesome buffet. By following authors, columnists, bloggers, public figures, etc – the content comes to you and is always updating in real time. In short, twitter can be your personal library or newsstand. All this data is difficult to manage: utilize hashtags and lists to search and sort information quickly. Dashboards like Hootsuite and TweetDeck allow you to digest the data by sorting it into multiple columns. Your dashboard gives you a snapshot of data: who is talking about you, who is talking about your company, what are the latest news stories, etc – all continuously and immediately updated.  

Share
It is as easy to share data as it is to consume it via twitter; don’t keep all the good stuff to yourself. If you read a tweet you find interesting, retweet so your followers can enjoy it too. Maybe you visit a website or wish to share your latest blog, take the URL and tweet it. Tools like bitly shorten that URL so it can fit within the 140 character limit and help you track the activity on your link. Seesmic’s dashboard will shorten the link for you.  

Engage
This is the best part of Social – engagement. The days of pushing information without conversation are gone. Twitter gives your customers an in-road to you, don’t be afraid of it: listen to what they say and respond. A TweetChat allows you to engage and listen to many people at once while documenting the conversations. Idea-share, focus groups, and feedback sessions: it’s all about conversation. This blog by one of my Social mentors, Janet Fouts, shows you how to set up your own TweetChat.  

Promote
Sharing information or engaging others promotes yourself and your organization. People can see who shares what and the twitterverse responds favorably to those they like; if your followers find your content interesting, they may also research what company employs such an interesting person.

I hope you were able to take away something new – I look forward to your comments & feedback. Cheers Toby