Twitter For Marketing : What Not To Do

I am pretty active on Twitter. Addicted wouldn’t be the perfect word to describe my Twitter use but I am pretty close. There certainly are days when I am checking my Treo ( if you are looking to buy a smart phone my suggestion would be to stay away from Treo. It sucks! )  to see whats new on Twitter even when I am not around the computer. Not good! My twitter use isn’t primarily for marketing purpose. Its networking and being surrounded by like minded people. Its a good platform to share thoughts, ideas and share interests.

Today I just wanted to share a few things that I personally think works better both in terms of building followers and for marketing. Remember if you are marketing on a social platform on the web, you can’t just send links to your product and services and expect results. That’s a fast road to being labeled “spammer.” The biggest misconception that I find on Twitter regarding building a presence or a massive following is : Follow everyone and atleast 75% will follow you. What is the point though? I don’t see a real benefit of this sort of mentality. If you want to network like crazy and follow 10,000 people’s tweets that swarm in like a group of bees, go right ahead. But if you are looking at Twitter as a marketing platform I just don’t see how it serves the purpose by doing mass following.

The key to any marketing campaign is to know your target market. A thorough research is vital for any marketing campaign and the same rule applies on Twitter as well. What is the point of promoting your products to 50,000 users on twitter when your actual target market might only be 2% of that. I hope you see my point. I personally think that if you want to promote your products, blogs, services or whatever it is, you need to find a way to create interest among users to build a following. This will create a “following” that is actually based on people that are interested in what you have to offer. That “following” is your target market. That following is who you want to reach.

If your comapny sells products only in US why the hell should you promote in Germany. It just doesn’t make sense. I think the key to marketing on twitter is to create a presence, a presence that compels others to follow you. A following that will welcome your messages both personal and business related.

Those are my personal opinion. Let me know what you think through your comments. Also if you like my thoughts and enjoy my tweets you can follow me here : ritubpant. Once again, follow only if you like what you see otherwise it just defeats the purpose of using Twitter.