Sunday, 09 January 2011 17:14
Funeral directors are starting to understand the value of Facebook and how it can help with their business, but one thing that seems to be horribly hard for them to grab hold of is the value of Twitter. Below is a list of 7 Way to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR. The list is from Hubspot's Social Marketing Team.
HubSpot's CEO, Brian Halligan, once dismissed Twitter. Then, he discovered some new uses. "I have to admit I have not always been sold on Twitter. At first I did not get it at all. Then I thought I understood it, but thought it was stupid and useless. Then I used it a bit more and got some more followers and followed a few more people. Now I think it has value, especially as a marketing and PR tool."
7 Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR
- Listen to the Buzz. Now that Twitter, and other social media channels, are part of mainstream search it's easy to see what's going on. Many tools let you take a pulse of your market based on brand or keyword searches. Even if it's too soon to jump into the conversation, you'll get excellent insights into customer needs, pains and trends that you could take advantage of for new product or marketing campaign ideas.
- Engage your CEO in social media. Social media is a great way to make and manage connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers. A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook. Far too many CEO blogs have few posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries. Since Twitter is limited to 140 characters it's easy to share short thoughts and comments. Twitter is a perfect medium for the leader who is always on the road and has some interesting opinions on your market.
- Keep in touch with bloggers / media. It's simple to follow someone on Twitter. You'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you back. In fact, several HubSpotters have lots of people we consider "famous" in the marketing and PR worlds following us as individuals. Twitter is a much easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling or emailing them.
- Monitor your company / brand on Twitter. A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter. Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it? The result was this blog article on Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads. (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)
- Announce specials, deals or sales. If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience. You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that "Ding" application you could download to alert you about specials on flights? Think of Twitter as a kind of free version. Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
- Live updates on events or conferences. If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening ("Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am") and more. It's a great ad hoc marketing tool.
- Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more. Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter. We often post links to blog posts or other news articles relevant to the marketing world. Regardless of the source, if you have info about content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar or ebook, post links to those as it'll increase their perception of you as a single source of great content and thought leadership in your space.
Yes Twitter can be a great marketing tool for funeral homes too.
Why not contact our CDsocial Marketing team (who is partnered with Disrupt Media Group) and get access to some of the tools used by savvy social media marketers?
