Share

Being an early adopter of Twitter, I realized it quickly that it offers immense potential for effective viral marketing virtually free of cost. The essence of viral marketing is to spread the word fast to a large number of people and no other social network (be it Facebook, Myspace or any other) can match Twitter’s speed and effectiveness in getting the message across to millions of people.

People often ask me what makes Twitter a great viral marketing tool. I believe the following 7 simple Twitter tips have worked wonders to bring me new customers and help popularize my brands.

1) Follow Like-Minded People – As in any other viral marketing campaign, it makes no sense to sell oranges to a customer who’s in the market to buy apples. Twitter adds millions of users every day. Let’s face it, not all of them are going to be your customers. Therefore, it is important to get connected with people who are like-minded and who would be interested in your product.

A large number of users have the tendency to follow a person back from whom they’ve received a follower request. Cash in on this opportunity and build an interested audience for your brand.

2) Initiate Interesting Conversations – Do not forget that Twitter is after all a social media site and not just an online shop to sell your stuff. Get customers engaged. Initiate lively and interesting conversations about your products. Do not adopt an aggressive sales pitch; it just doesn’t work on Twitter.

Mind your manners; be polite and courteous with your tweets.

3) Tweet often – Tweets have a very short attention span. If you do not tweet, you’ll be out of sight and do not forget that ‘Out of sight, Out of mind’ rule works with most customers.

Tweeting regularly is a great habit which lets customers know that your brand is alive and kicking. As a rule, make sure to tweet at least once every day. Less than 10% Twitter followers have a tendency to look at tweets from yesterday, so if you are not regular, you’ll be missing these users attention.

4) Get Retweeted – Retweeting is one of my favorite Twitter features for viral marketing. Add value to an ongoing conversation and get access to thousands of new prospect customers.

Retweets are the best way to get in contact with new users on Twitter and opens up endless possibilities for launching viral marketing campaigns.

5) Initiate Polls – Conduct polls on Twitter and offer some cool goodies as prizes for people who participate in your polls. Polls bring in great traffic and attention to your Twitter page so make the most out of it

Be it Twitter or any other website, people love free gifts and prizes. Ask your followers to retweet your poll messages to their followers. The larger the number of people participating in your polls, the larger is your prospect customer base.

6) Link-Up – Link-up all your social networking accounts e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace with Twitter. With multiple social networking sites, the power of your Twitter viral marketing campaign gets an exponential boost.

Make it a point to post your tweets on all your social network accounts.

7) Learn from others – There are thousands of viral marketing success stories on Twitter. All you need to do is learn from others – be it your competitors, your allies or even brands which are not associated with you.

How is your buzz level? Where do you rank amidst the competition? Use the Twitter search to find how many results your brand gets. Compare it with others. Stay away from the hassles of reinventing the wheel when you don’t need to do so.

Twitter is a great tool to interact with prospects and customers. If you are not using it, you are missing out big-time on what’s perhaps the best free online viral marketing tool ever.