[tweetmeme]Twitter is a social messaging and microblogging site where you can post messages in 140 characters or less. The site has grown at a phenomenal phase, growing at a staggering 1,382 percent on an annual basis.
As such, it is not surprising that both celebrities, businesses and gurus have immersed themselves on Twitter. Businesss use Twitter to communicate with their customers and target market, alert users of deals and promotions, provide customer service, expose Twitter users to their content, and drive traffic back to their website.
Pete Cashmore, founder of the social media guide website Mashable.com, is ranked #27 in Twitter with 670,666 followers. All of his Tweets are Mashable posts. But instead of just repeating the title of the article, he often adds his unique spin to drive more interests — and clicks — to his posts.
Cashmore’s tweeting is also a good example of how to brand your business in Twitter. He uses the business name “mashable” as his Twitter name, while giving his business personality and face by putting his name and photo in his bio page.
Guy Kawasaki, author of several best selling business books and venture capitalist, has about 123,075 followers. His Twitter posts typically combine a useful or interesting news items from various sources, with a link back to his website. In each post, he almost always put in a “see also” referencing his RSS aggregator site alltop.com. It’s a clever way to market his website without being spammy.
Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos.com, is ranked by Twitterholic.com as #36 with 628,707 followers. In one interview, Hseih revealed that his company doesn’t look at Twitter to drive additional traffic. In fact, his posts are mostly his personal thoughts, updates of his day, events at the office — instead of straight out promoting Zappo.com deals. Twitter for Zappos is more about branding, serving a way customers (and even employees) to see that they are real people. Their goal is to develop personal connection with the Zappos brand.
Zappos.com even offer Twitter training for their employees, and to date, 430 employees are on Twitter including Hseih. The company also has a special subdomain in their site twitter.zappos.com that covers the posts of all their employees, public mention of Zappos.com, collection of pics posted on Twitter (twitpics), and even their tutorial/quick start guide on using Twitter.
I still question the approach of guykawasaki. I'm no expert but it seems like the most appealing way for businesses compared with the other approaches you have used. However too many links can look spammy and get people tired I think? At least I know I do when I see too many links, I just pass it by at times. But thanks for the insights.
I have been using Twitter for a few months now and can tell you from my own experience that if you don’t have a lot of followers then it is really not worth it to use it to drive traffic. I am sure that many would disagree with me on that but show me one person how has 500 followers who is making a good and decent income. Tal
I have been using Twitter for a few months now and can tell you from my own experience that if you don’t have a lot of followers then it is really not worth it to use it to drive traffic. I am sure that many would disagree with me on that but show me one person how has 500 followers who is making a good and decent income. Tal