How Twitter boosts your Marketing

from Linked In 28 Oct 13 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz

Author Mark Schaefer says: “Twitter is an essential component of any content marketing strategy, which might seem surprising since we are pretty limited with what we can accomplish in 140 characters, right? Let’s expand our view of Twitter as an essential component of a content marketing strategy”.

Twitter as an Ignition Point. By now, many companies understand they need content. They have established a Facebook & LinkedIN page + a Blog. But what they are missing is the “Network” component of their marketing strategy. For content to work for you on the web, it has to move. To do this you need an active & engaged audience. Here are three reasons Twitter excels as a way to ignite your content:

1. The Fastest way. I believe Twitter offers the fastest way to build an audience of “relevant” followers for your content. The primary reason is because you have an opportunity to interact and engage with the right people for your business even if they don’t follow you back (you can’t do this on Facebook or LinkedIn).

2. Finding “relevant” people on Twitter can be done several ways. One good resource is Twellow, which is a sort of Yellow Pages for Twitter. Another little secret not too many know about is Advanced Twitter. In my book “The Tao of Twitter”, there is an entire chapter with 22 different ways to build a targeted audience through Twitter-related strategies.

3. Audience-building tool. “if” you are doing a good job really inter-acting & building relationships on Twitter, people should also be interested, eventually, in the links that you share which lead them to your content, and perhaps engagement.

A source of Content. There is a lot of pressure today to relentlessly come up with ideas that result in interesting content. Twitter also helps in this area:

4. News Breaks on Twitter. If you are looking to comment on the latest break-throughs and to share the newest ideas, they are probably hitting Twitter first.

5. Follow your best Mentors. You should follow a list of your best Mentors on the web – the people you respect as “Thought leaders”. If you follow this list, it should be a better source of content ideas than any RSS feed you could establish, because you are not only seeing their ideas, but the important links and developments they are following.

[ 6. Don’t re-treat, Re-Tweet, Social Proof, 7. Tweets & Facebook Likes, 8. Internal Network, 9. SEO benefits, 10. Advertising in Premium Content ]