When measuring the success of your Tweeting it is important not to simply count the number of followers you have. You need to think about how many potential people are within your network.
For example, let’s imagine you have 200 followers. 2 of those followers retweet your link to their 200 followers. Suddenly you have reached a potential 600 people.
Ever wondered about retweeting? Are you new to Twitter and can’t decipher the strange codes people talk in.
Here is my three point guide to retweeting:
Retweeting is a great way of sharing information with the people you follow. It is generally how articles and news are able to travel so quickly to so many people on Twitter.
Last week I wrote a blog post about how smart phones, and the iPhone in particular, have become the centre of our communications. One example of a company really taking advantage of new technology and opportunities is Arsenal FC. Before you click away and think that a football team doesn’t have anything in common with your business, think for a moment as the fans as customers. They pay for a product, which is football, and they buy merchandise, which is all associated with the Arsenal brand.
Arsenal probably don’t need to do as much marketing as they do to consistently sell out each game. Their product, the football, is good enough to do that. By communicating constantly with their supporters and offering them terrific services they add value to their overall offering. Which helps when they ask their season ticket holders for £1,000 every year.
This is why the Arsenal iPhone App is such a genius idea. In my pocket I have fixture information, latest news, video clips (so I can show off Cesc Fabregas to my mates), picture gallery, access to ticket news and information about each player (great for solving arguments in the pub). I didn’t even notice paying £2.99 I was so excited.
Its main strength is its simplicity. They haven’t tried to create a community in an app, they’re just giving people the main information. It integrates perfectly with the website, so the news is constantly updating, and it also takes its video content from there. It is almost the perfect app.
Compare this to Manchester United and Chelsea. They’re just not quite there yet, but they are close.
We’re all busy people, always have been. The most overused excuse in business is that people don’t have time. Which is why social networking seems like it’s going to take too much time to be worth it. Many people read about Twitter and LinkedIn and learn how great they are for their business, which they can be, but, having joined up and filled out their profiles, realise they don’t have enough time to really make the most of them. It can be pretty intimidating when you first get on Twitter and follow a few people. You’re not really sure what you’re supposed to do and you quickly realise that it’s not just a load of people talking about making tea, as many people suppose.
The most important thing when joining an online network is to make sure you’ve got enough time to invest in it and to ensure that it is the right network for you and your business. This can be a matter of trial and error, but if you invest the time at the beginning you will find that the benefits far outweigh the time it costs you.
In the 1990′s, many businesses built their first website. It included details of what their business did, why they were great and how to contact them. In other words it was a copy of their corporate brochure. As the web grew, business owners and marketing managers were left wondering why their sites weren’t generating any business.
The problem was that most of these sites were aimed at all the key target audiences – clients, potential clients, potential employees, potential investors, suppliers etc. A company would have several different brochures aimed at each target market and different literature for employees and suppliers. It makes sense to target each audience differently as they have different needs and so the messages are specific for each one.
So how do you target your website at all your different audiences? Put simply, you don’t. A website isn’t a brochure, it’s a website and people use websites differently from a brochure. The majority of people online will visit social networking sites, like Facebook, or read news sites. These are sites that are useful to them, they will return to these sites many times in a day, have them favourited and easy to access, possibly have them on their mobiles as well.
So businesses need to consider why someone would visit their site repeatedly, especially if they are not selling anything online. They need to create a site that is a hub of industry focussed information, which in turn will reflect their knowledge and expertise. It will also build up their online presence, adding value to their brand. It will open up communications with their core audiences, building trust.
A website should not replace a brochure, a brochure can still be an important selling tool. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a printed format, it can be sent as an email newsletter, but it is still the most effective way of targeting a specific audience with a targeted message.
