Many digital marketing professionals use Twitter as just another means to send out drab promotional messages to the scores of people who choose to ‘follow’ them. This, however, is making use of just a small portion of what Twitter can do for your business. Rather than being an online bulletin board for pinning up digital marketing ads, Twitter is more of an online communications mechanism. This communicative ability should be harnessed by brands to engage customers in real time conversations, over time.

Many celebrities, news websites, and big brands have built up millions of followers on Twitter, and generated significant sales. However, it is important for digital marketing professionals to understand that this does not always work for small non-media companies. Rather than checking your ‘follower’ count continuously, you will be able to achieve your business goals better if you spend time building your Twitter credentials. To achieve this, you will require an integrated digital marketing strategy for your Twitter activities.

Before developing such a strategy, it is important to develop an understanding about Twitter’s position within the social media landscape in the United States market. While Twitter’s usage continues to increase in most countries around the world, a digital marketing study by The Nielsen Company indicates that the amount of unique visitors on Twitter from the US has fallen almost 30 percent, since September 2010. In fact, they also said that only one-tenth of active Internet users log-on to Twitter every month, having an average of only six visits in each month.

Below are some digital marketing strategies, which could increase your influence on Twitter:

TweetChat: Curate or join a TweetChat on Twitter: TweetChats are online conversations on specific topics, which are scheduled at a fixed time. After the online chat is over, you can create a chat transcript to engage your audience.

• Transmit live events: Share presentation pieces from conferences related to your brand, which you have attended. You can use the event’s hashtag, and the presenter’s Twitter handle, to further this aim.
• Enhance the tweet value of your presentation: If you have organised an event, promote your Twitter hashtag and Twitter handle in presentation material. Some audience members, after knowing that you are on Twitter, will feel encouraged to share your digital marketing message, or make comments. You can also use Twitter to get a collection of questions/inputs from online audiences.
• Join discussions: Just like you look for conversations to join at parties, you need to search for interesting people/brands on Twitter, whose Tweets you would like to read, and comment upon. Such people could be industry experts, news agencies, research organizations and other media entities, who could give you latest news and information about industry developments.

Qudos Digital is a leading digital marketing agency, and can be contacted on 0845 388 5583 or info@qudosdigital.co.uk.