Twitter is 1 application of a broader category called microblogging. You've seen it on The View, you've watched it creep into night time dramas, yous've heard information technology in the news, you've seen Larry King take on Ashton Kutcher with their one 1000000 follower challenge. Ashton Kutcher got over one meg followers and beat Larry Rex / CNN. Ashton had one,230,000+ and CNN had 980,000+ where the match actually bought malaria nets for children in Africa. Isn't this a great application of social media; helping kids?

And then of form, that led to the Ding-Dong Ditch where Ashton Kutcher "punked" Ted Turner the owner of CNN. If you're not familiar with the Ding-Dong Ditch; you ring someone's doorbell, then when answered, you begin throwing Ding-Dongs, literally. CNN lost, and so they bombed his firm with Ding-Dongs. I learned that even Demi was Ding Donging with the residual of them.

Dorsum to discussing Twitter though. Twitter is text messaging on steroids. Recently, I was in Atlanta presenting to Jerry McGuire's clients (Leigh Steinberg), and in that location were more Super Bowl rings in the room than I had e'er seen before. I fabricated the aforementioned argument and this crowd went expressionless. Steroids…not a good thing; the marketing moral is, know your audience.

a twitter about twitter

On Twitter, you voluntarily select to receive text messages from people that you lot respect and then you "follow" them. People who respect you receive your text messages or "follow" yous. Anytime you get an inspiration or something intelligent to say, transport out a Tweet. When others accept something intelligent to share (and sometimes non so intelligent) they Tweet it and you lot see it. This way y'all're instantly informed. That's all there is to it.

At my most recent conference, we had a Twitter Roll on a separate screen at the front stage. It was a laptop connected to the Internet that simply received any text messages sent via Twitter that mentioned the briefing. That way anytime someone in the audience had something to say nigh what was existence presented or any questions, I could address them immediately in real-time. A miracle I recognized for the first time, was we had every bit many questions from the conference audience on the screen equally nosotros had from people from effectually the earth, not at the briefing. I'd answer their questions and people would Tweet my answers back out to the Twittersphere.

Everyone keeps asking me about Twitter metrics; how can you make coin using Twitter. Whether it's Twitter or whatsoever other social network, it takes time to build your trusted network, but when you exercise, they're there for you. Here's 1 example study that makes it easy to come across the ROI. If you lot oasis't already seen Gary Vaynerchuk, you have to go and look at some of his videos. Gary has produced nigh 700 videos nigh wine. He'southward a Jersey boy. He took over his dad'south wine distributorship, which had almanac revenues at about $5M. He started using Twitter and creating brusk, cocky produced videos nigh wine and within 36 months built his company to $50M. And recently, he signed a $1M contract to write a series of x books on social media marketing. That'southward the power of this genre. Click here to listen to my conversation with Gary Five: http://world wide web.thesocialmediabible.com/2009/02/27/gary-vaynerchuk/

In December, Gary wanted to understand the value of his twitter relationships. He wanted to specifically compare conventional marketing that we are all comfortable with, with this new Tweet stuff. He started past creating three different codes that when entered on his wine Web site would give the customer gratuitous shipping on their next wine gild. This disbelieve would range from $9 on i bottle of vino to $49 on a case of wine. He then created a direct postal service slice, which offered i of the codes. He did a billboard on one of the local highways with its ain lawmaking and then he sent out a text message (a Tweet) on Twitter with the tertiary lawmaking. Hither are the results.

The direct mail piece price him $15,000 to produce and mail. Nosotros've all been there; $15,000 is a reasonable cost for a decent directly mail service campaign. This conventional marketing technique acquired Gary 200 new customers. He got 200 new customers for $15,000 using direct postal service. The ROI or Cost Of Customer Acquisition was $15,000 divided past 200 or $75 per new client. His billboard cost him $7,500 and he generated 300 new customers. His ROI or CCA here was $seven,500 divided by 300 customers or $25 per new customer.

His 1 free text message, a Tweet using Twitter, brought in 1,800 new customers. This marketing was 100% costless. What was the ROI here; $0 divided by 1,800 customers or infinity. That's the power of Twitter. That's the ability of social networks. That'southward why this stuff is and then important. People follow you, people trust you. They'll listen to you lot when you have something to say.

Read more than of Lon Safko's Social Media Bible blog

Lon Safko is the co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies For Business organization Success . He is also an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of viii successful companies, including Newspaper Models, Inc.


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