Contents at a Glance

Introduction ...... 1 Part I: The Future of in Business ...... 7 Chapter 1: I Tweet, You Tweet, We All Tweet: Twitter and Your Business ...... 9 Chapter 2: Getting Started with Twitter ...... 19 Part II: Building and Implementing Your Twitter Marketing Road Map ...... 39 Chapter 3: Combining New and Old Media Marketing ...... 41 Chapter 4: Planning Your Twitter Marketing Strategy ...... 59 Chapter 5: Being Productive with Your Twitter Marketing Plan ...... 73 Chapter 6: Measuring the Success of Your Marketing Plan ...... 91 Part III: Devising Online Strategies for Twitter Marketing Domination ...... 121 Chapter 7: Building Your Personal Twitter Tribe ...... 123 Chapter 8: Leveraging Your Twitter Tribe ...... 139 Chapter 9: Reaching Your Customers ...... 155 Chapter 10: Creating Quality Content on Twitter...... 175 Part IV: Implementing Twitter Strategies for Offline Marketing Domination ...... 191 Chapter 11: Promoting to Attract Sales Leads ...... 193 Chapter 12: Improving Your Customer Service ...... 211 Chapter 13: Relating to the Public ...... 229 Chapter 14: BuildingCOPYRIGHTED Thought Leadership on Twitter MATERIAL ...... 247 Part V: The Part of Tens ...... 261 Chapter 15: Ten Do’s on Twitter ...... 263 Chapter 16: Ten Don’ts on Twitter ...... 267 Chapter 17: Ten Thought Leaders on Twitter...... 273 Chapter 18: Ten Tools for Twitter Productivity ...... 279

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Introduction ...... 1 About This Book ...... 1 Foolish Assumptions ...... 2 Conventions Used in This Book ...... 3 How This Book Is Organized ...... 3 Part I: The Future of Twitter in Business ...... 3 Part II: Building and Implementing Your Twitter Marketing Roadmap ...... 4 Part III: Devising Online Strategies for Twitter Marketing Domination ...... 4 Part IV: Implementing Twitter Strategies for Offl ine Marketing Domination ...... 4 Part V: The Part of Tens ...... 4 Appendixes ...... 5 Icons Used in This Book ...... 5 Where to Go from Here ...... 6

Part I: The Future of Twitter in Business ...... 7

Chapter 1: I Tweet, You Tweet, We All Tweet: Twitter and Your Business...... 9 Understanding How Twitter Works ...... 10 Micro-blogging (tweeting) ...... 10 Following others and being followed ...... 11 Sharing with your followers and retweeting ...... 12 Using Twitter in Your Business ...... 13 Sharing news and stories ...... 14 Empowering your fans ...... 15 Customer service ...... 15 Finding a fi t for your business ...... 15 Marketing on Twitter ...... 17 Chapter 2: Getting Started with Twitter...... 19 Signing Up with Twitter ...... 20 Creating a Twitter account ...... 20 Using the Find Sources that Interest You features ...... 22 What’s with the Verifi ed Accounts? ...... 25

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Writing your 160-character bio and more ...... 26 Adding a picture ...... 27 Completing your additional profi le settings ...... 30 Understanding Twitter Basics ...... 30 Compiling and following Twitter lists ...... 35 Using Listorious to maximize list building ...... 36 Twitter Software You Can Use ...... 37

Part II: Building and Implementing Your Twitter Marketing Road Map ...... 39

Chapter 3: Combining New and Old Media Marketing ...... 41 Applying Old-School Marketing and Principles ...... 42 Working with New Media Tools and Techniques ...... 46 Understanding the potential of ...... 47 Keeping your message real ...... 47 Tweeting to Find Warm Sales Leads ...... 48 Searching for potential customers ...... 49 Turning prospects into warm leads ...... 51 Sending commercial messages on Twitter ...... 52 Promoted Tweets ...... 53 What are promoted tweets? ...... 53 Positives and negatives of promoted tweets ...... 54 Deciding What to Tweet About ...... 56 The fi ve types of tweets ...... 57 Tweeting about what you know ...... 57 Chapter 4: Planning Your Twitter Marketing Strategy ...... 59 Setting a Destination for Your Marketing Strategy ...... 60 Choosing a target audience ...... 60 Identifying your unique selling position ...... 61 Figuring out what your customers value ...... 63 Implementing Your Plan ...... 64 Crafting your message ...... 64 Defi ning the tactics ...... 66 Finalizing your marketing plan ...... 71 Chapter 5: Being Productive with Your Twitter Marketing Plan . . . .73 Creating a Time-Management Strategy for Twitter ...... 73 Avoiding Twitter overload ...... 74 Setting aside blocks of time ...... 76

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Using Third-Party Tools to Be More Productive with Twitter ...... 77 ...... 77 TweetDeck ...... 79 CoTweet ...... 83 Ping.fm ...... 85 Making the Most of Your Time on Twitter ...... 86 Don’t agonize over what to say ...... 86 Don’t read every tweet from the people you follow ...... 87 Don’t try to add value to all your tweets ...... 88 Do spread out your marketing tweets ...... 89 Do stick to a schedule with your tweets ...... 89 Chapter 6: Measuring the Success of Your Marketing Plan ...... 91 Measuring Your Advertising and Marketing Efforts ...... 92 Using an analytics package ...... 92 Twitalyzer ...... 97 HootSuite analytics ...... 101 Using URL shorteners ...... 102 Following the right people ...... 105 Using social media–monitoring services ...... 108 Tracking and Increasing Your Infl uence on Twitter ...... 110 Getting in on ...... 111 Tracking retweets with Retweetist ...... 113 Engaging Others on Twitter ...... 114 Balancing the follow-to-followers ratio ...... 115 Reducing your number of Twitter followers ...... 116

Part III: Devising Online Strategies for Twitter Marketing Domination ...... 121

Chapter 7: Building Your Personal Twitter Tribe...... 123 Building Your Twitter Network ...... 123 Determining the best way to build your network ...... 124 Finding friends and professional contacts ...... 125 Searching for followers based on interests and keywords ...... 126 Identifying industry leaders and evangelists ...... 127 Hunting down your competition ...... 129 Finding the locals ...... 129 Following #FollowFriday ...... 130 Determining who’s worth following ...... 131

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Quantity over Quality ...... 132 Understanding the value of quantity in the Twitterverse ...... 133 Following the rules for building a quantity-based network...... 133 Understanding the negative side of list building ...... 134 Building the following that your business needs...... 134 Qualifying out of the quantifi ed ...... 135 The Pros and Cons of Auto-DMs ...... 136 Chapter 8: Leveraging Your Twitter Tribe ...... 139 The Power of the Retweet ...... 139 Discovering the art of retweeting ...... 141 Connecting with your evangelists ...... 143 Tracking Your Followers by Using TwitterCounter ...... 143 Signing up for TwitterCounter...... 144 Searching for followers using TwitterCounter ...... 147 Viewing your follower growth on TwitterCounter ...... 147 Tracking When You Lose Followers with Qwitter ...... 149 Signing up for Qwitter ...... 150 Understanding why Qwitter is a powerful content tool ...... 151 Showing Your Followers That You Value Them ...... 151 Sharing before asking to share ...... 152 Asking how you can help your followers ...... 153 Chapter 9: Reaching Your Customers ...... 155 Finding Your Customers on Twitter ...... 156 Searching by subject matter on Twitter ...... 156 Finding followers by syncing your contact list ...... 161 Empowering Current Customers to Spread the Message ...... 165 Spreading a message to friends of friends of friends ...... 166 Understanding viral marketing on Twitter ...... 167 Creating your own viral marketing campaign ...... 168 Driving Traffi c to Your Web Site or Blog ...... 169 Publishing blog feeds by hand ...... 169 Automating your blog feed ...... 170 Automating your blog through HootSuite ...... 171 Retweeting to add value ...... 172 Encouraging your followers to retweet ...... 173 Understanding What Etiquette Has to Do with Twitter Marketing ...... 174 Chapter 10: Creating Quality Content on Twitter ...... 175 Generating Quality Content ...... 175 Tweeting about what matters to you ...... 176 Tweeting about what matters to your brand ...... 176 Conversing with your followers ...... 177

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Developing Your Story on Twitter ...... 178 Developing your brand story ...... 179 Developing content ...... 179 Keeping Up with Trends on Twitter ...... 180 Understanding Twitter trends ...... 180 Monitoring Twitter trends ...... 182 The Art of the ...... 182 Understanding tags ...... 183 Understanding ...... 185 Making the best use of hashtags ...... 186 Tracking the hashtag ...... 189

Part IV: Implementing Twitter Strategies for Offline Marketing Domination ...... 191

Chapter 11: Promoting to Attract Sales Leads ...... 193 Avoiding Interruption Marketing Tactics on Twitter ...... 193 Making the Most of Twitter Keywords ...... 196 Developing your business keywords...... 197 Finding people who are talking about your keywords ...... 199 Promoting Your Niche by Using Tweets ...... 201 Writing about sales and deals ...... 202 Writing about your services proactively ...... 205 Promoting Your Content through Discussion ...... 206 When and where to promote: Promoting the right way ...... 208 The value of thought leadership in B2B sales ...... 209 Chapter 12: Improving Your Customer Service...... 211 May I Help? Twitter Customer Service from Comcast ...... 211 Empowering Your Customer Service ...... 214 Discovering why you should use Twitter for customer service ...214 Determining who should use Twitter for customer service...... 218 Responding to public complaints on Twitter ...... 219 Practicing the Art of Listening ...... 220 Understanding why it’s important to listen on Twitter ...... 220 Using an RSS feed to track your brand...... 221 Investigating popular RSS readers ...... 222 Using Twitter for Customer Service for a Small Business ...... 224 Offering Actionable Advice on Twitter ...... 225 Handling customer issues, concerns, cares, or problems ...... 226 Remembering to say yes ...... 227

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Chapter 13: Relating to the Public...... 229 Managing Your Reputation ...... 229 Following some general guidelines ...... 230 Monitoring what other folks are saying ...... 230 Using Reputation Management Services on Twitter ...... 232 Free reputation management services ...... 233 Paid reputation management services ...... 234 Promoting Live Events on Twitter ...... 235 Promoting your event ...... 235 Live tweeting your event...... 236 Monitoring live tweets at an event ...... 237 Setting the Proper Tone in Your Twitter Communications ...... 238 Maintaining a professional tone ...... 238 Keeping it real: Transparency and authenticity ...... 240 Doing Media Relations with Twitter ...... 241 Pitching a story to journalists ...... 242 Finding someone to write about your product ...... 244 Using virtual press centers ...... 245 Using Twitter for crisis communications ...... 245 Chapter 14: Building Thought Leadership on Twitter ...... 247 The Big Deal about Thought Leadership ...... 248 Being a thought leader can help your career ...... 248 Being a thought leader can help increase your sales ...... 250 The Importance of Your Twitter Bio ...... 251 Writing the right bio ...... 251 Avoiding the wrong bio ...... 253 Becoming a B2B Thought Leader ...... 255 Sharing your content ...... 256 Sharing others’ valuable content ...... 259 Collaboration is key ...... 260

Part V: The Part of Tens ...... 261

Chapter 15: Ten Do’s on Twitter...... 263 Do Be Honest ...... 263 Do Have a Sense of Humor ...... 263 Do Interact with Your Followers ...... 264 Do Use TwitPic ...... 264 Do Tweet on a Regular Basis ...... 265 Do Use a Profi le Picture ...... 265 Do Fun Stuff Every Day ...... 265 Do Stick to a Schedule ...... 266 Do Say Thank You ...... 266 Do Add Your Twitter Name to Your Business Card ...... 266

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Chapter 16: Ten Don’ts on Twitter...... 267 Don’t Auto-DM ...... 267 Don’t Say It on Twitter When It’s Better Said in Person ...... 267 Don’t Gather Too Many Followers Too Fast ...... 268 Don’t Forget Your Marketing Strategy ...... 269 Don’t Follow for the Sake of Following ...... 269 Don’t Use the Web Platform ...... 269 Don’t Create Too Many Accounts ...... 270 Don’t Give a Hard Sell ...... 270 Don’t Ignore Others ...... 270 Don’t Have an Uneven Following/Follower Ratio ...... 271 Chapter 17: Ten Thought Leaders on Twitter ...... 273 Jay Baer ...... 273 Chris Brogan ...... 274 Jason Falls ...... 274 Pete Cashmore ...... 274 Jeremiah Owyang ...... 275 Katie Paine ...... 275 Brian Solis ...... 276 Scott Stratten ...... 276 Gary Vaynerchuk ...... 276 Carrie Wilkerson ...... 277 Chapter 18: Ten Tools for Twitter Productivity...... 279 bit.ly ...... 279 HootSuite ...... 280 Nearby Tweets ...... 280 SocialToo ...... 280 TweetDeck ...... 281 TweetMetrics ...... 281 twhirl ...... 282 Twilert ...... 282 Twitter Grader ...... 283 Twitterrifi c ...... 283

Part VI: Appendixes ...... 285

Appendix A: Great Twitter Marketing Ideas in 140 Characters or Less ...... 287 Marketing ...... 287 Promoting Your Brand ...... 289 Building Relationships ...... 290 Engaging in Conversation ...... 291

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Retweeting ...... 292 Following and Followers ...... 293 Using Twitter Wisely ...... 294 Appendix B: The Best Twitter Applications and Support Sites . . . .295 BeTweeted ...... 295 CoTweet ...... 296 Digsby ...... 296 monitter ...... 296 SocialOomph ...... 297 TrackThis ...... 297 Twimailer ...... 297 TwitHawk ...... 297 Twitoria ...... 298 TwitPic ...... 298 Twitter Toolbar ...... 298 TwitterFox ...... 299

Index ...... 301

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