Twitter Power. Dominate Your Market With Twitter

The Digital Marketer

Twitter Power. Dominate Your Market With Twitter
The Digital Marketer

As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that user's tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you'll see a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast-cereal updates, interesting new links, music recommendations, even musings on the future of education.

In business

Twitter is increasingly being used as a business promotional tool. Twitter encourages this through "Twitter 101", a web-based tutorial aimed at business users.[95] For example, one of the notable business Twitter users is Dell, which reported $9m of its 2009 sales coming directly through Twitter and Facebook combined. It has been argued that smaller businesses also benefit from using Twitter, since they can compete on equal terms with larger businesses within the Twitter platform. In the UK, a survey indicated that 17% of small British businesses were using Twitter, mainly to attract new customers.

Small businesses can employ evangelists using a variety of techniques to reach more followers, and sometimes produce industry leaders. Ford has elevated their head of Marketing, Scott Monty, into the public spotlight as an evangelist of the use of technology in the automotive industry. Robert Scoble has kept his own company, Rackspace in the public eye and maintained his own publicity primarily through Twitter.

However, increased use of social networking sites has provoked concern about privacy in the workplace, and the protection of company data. A survey of 1,400 chief information officers also revealed concerns about the potential for employee distraction, if they were given unlimited access to social networking sites such as Twitter.

Twitter started showing advertising to users on April 13, 2010 in the company's first significant attempt to turn its microblogging service into a profitable business.

In fundraising

Fundraising campaigns have been held on Twitter, where users are encouraged to tweet about and donate to a particular cause for a specified period of time.[102][103] This is sometimes known as a "Tweet-a-thon", which is a portmanteau of the words "tweet" and "marathon".

Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging started the 12for12K tweet-a-thon along with Danny Brown, founder of the organization 12for12K. 12for12K is an organization that combines social media and raising funds to impact and change the lives of millions worldwide. It first began in 2009 and uses social media platforms to run events for different charity each month to meet their goal of $12,000 within a twelve hour time frame. In order to participate, one follows the #12for12K hashtag and re-tweets about the tweet-a-thon. For every twelve dollars donated, one is entered into a raffle with varying prizes. One hundred percent of the donation is given to the specified charity. In result, Stratten started a tweet-a-thon for the charity Share Our Strength. He was able to raise $12,000 within five and half hours of the twelve hour period. In the end of the twelve hour period he was able to raise $15,500. During the tweet-a-thon, traffic for 12for12K.org increased by 4000%. On the website a Twitter avatar frame helped bring in 3,600 followers. In 2009, 12for12K.org raised $91,275 for Share Our Strength and several other charities.

The UK non-profit sector used Twitter to update supporters and potential donors when user BigDaveSB used hashtag "#charitytuesday", for which he later shared in a Justgiving Award 2010 for innovative fundraising, using Twitter to keep supporters up to date with regard to progress in a charity jailbreak.

Sue Black and others have used Twitter and other social media to raise the profile and funding for Bletchley Park.

In June 2010, Onlineshoes.com and Saucony collaborated to raise awareness and funds for childhood obesity through a tweet-a-thon. For every tweet, Onlineshoes.com donated a dollar to Saucony's "Run for Good" program, a grant program for encouraging active and healthy lifestyles for children.

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