Using Twitter for Promotional Products

 

Twitter is really not about engagement, but about broadcast

If you are thrilled with your Twitter effort and getting lots of clients or really great engagement from your effort, stop now.  This post is not for you.  Or, maybe it is.  You see, there are three Twitters out there.

1.  Fan based - If you are Madonna or Sarah Palin, folks care what you Tweet.  You can respond to their Tweets and they might even respond to you.  Unlikely.  If you are not a celebrity, or at least a minor celebrity in your field, very few are waiting for your next Tweet.

2.  Your group - It is possible to get groups of like minded individuals to correspond by Twitter.  Teens do this.  Some clubs do this.  You may be able to get your clients to work with you this way, but there are better ways, like Yahoo groups, Linkedin groups, even Google+ Circles.

3.  Broadcast media

Take a look at your incoming news stream on Twitter.  How much of it looks like it is intending to engage?  Almost none.  Most of it is intending to entice.  The sender is teasing you to go to their more robust online media:  Website, blog, or YouTube video.  They are very likely Tweeting virtually the same Tweet 5 times a day.  Hoping to find you home. 

The really savvy Twitter campaigners have a bigger goal in mind.  They want to be found on Twitter search.  Check it out!  At the top of your Twitter Home page you will see a small gray box.  I have no idea why it isn't more predominant on the page.  But many people use the Twitter search engine instead of Google search or Bing, or in addition to one of those.

Twitter search is going to get you the moving news on a subject, short very direct headlines and teasers, and a very fast overview on any subject.  Go ahead and try it.  Put in custom pens or mugs or bike bells.  Once you enter a subject, you will get a new feed that is either "top" or "all" depending on your choice.  This is where you want to be found.

TIME OUT

But the problem with Twitter is time.  For most important keywords that you might search, those Tweets will only be viewable for a half hour or so.  Therefore, if you want to be found, you need to be Tweeting your message about custom bike bells every hour each day.  How in the world do you do that?

By using an automation tool like Hootsuite.  Through the use of Hootsuite, you can pre plan 50 Tweets at a time, then upload them until they run out, then upload them again in about a minute.  We typically have about 48 tweets per day going out from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM.  We don't run the same Tweet all day long, but vary them. 

The use of the automation tool on Hootsuite is a bit complicated, especially for Apple users.  I find the best way is to lay out my Tweets is on a Google Docs Spreadsheet.  (Go to Docs.google.com)  They work like an Excel spread sheet.  You lay out your Tweets like the following:

The left column is the date and time.  It must be done exactly as you see it.  Day/month/year space military time.

The second column is your Tweet content.  Use keywords here and narrow the focus so that you are creating a rifle shot.  The person who clicks on this link should be a seriously interested potential buyer.  If you are regional, you might want to include you city, county, or state so that those in other parts of the country or world are not clicking on your link.

The content should also be alluring.  A Tease.  Words like New, Special, Sale, Save, Wow, Shocking, or seasons, holidays, and such.

The third column includes your short URL for the location or media where they can go to get more info.  You can create the short URL by sending out a Tweet on Hootsuite, which will automatically give you a shortened URL (see below), or by using a tool like http://bit.ly.  You can also place a shortened YouTube URL in that third column.

Once you have created the spread sheet with up to 50 different Tweets, you can download as a comma-separated values (CSV) under the "file" tab.  Once you have this download it is ready to use on the Hootsuite automation tool.

Set up an account at Hootsuite.com  (Trial month free, then $9.99 a month. I am not an affiliate.)  Now add your Twitter account to your Hootsuite tool. Go to the streams page and you will see the following

Note the compose message area.  This is where you can set up new messages.  Once you add the social network to the box on the right, it will give you a character count, so that you know how many you have left.  Leave at least 9 or 10 so there is room for others to Retweet.  Once you begin to write in the compose message space it will expand and you will see a spot to put in your URL, so that it can be shortened.

When you have completed your Tweet and shortened the URL, copy the resulting Tweet and add to your spread sheet.

Automation tool - Note the little blue box with the date on it.  When you click on this you will find a form where you can schedule future Tweets.  You can do this one at a time.  It is tedious.  At the bottom of the form you will see in small letters:  bulk message uploader.  Click on this to reveal the tool.

This is the bulk message uploader (below).  The top space is where you go and locate the CSV file that you downloaded earlier of your Google Doc spread sheet.

The automation tool will be set up with the blue dot mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm selected.  Change to the other one:  dd/mm/yyy hh:mm.  In the third spot, choose the correct social media option (at this point the only choice is probably your Twitter account)

Now push submit.  It takes 30 seconds to a  minute or so to upload.  However, you may get a rebuke instead.  As noted below in the picture, there are several things you cannot due.  The first Tweet must be schuled at least 10 minutes from upload, and all Tweets must be at least 10 minutes apart.  Easy.  I commonly run mine an hour apart.

Next, there can be no duplicates.  This is easy to solve.  Any change will do.  Change a period to an exclamation point.  Change at to @.  Change You to U or Are to R.  Short forms are common on Twitter.

The general set up method I prefer is to have 16 completely different Tweets that I then duplicate three times on a spread sheet.  Then I go to each of the duplicates and make the minor changes.  This gives me 48 unique Tweets. 

What Social Media Is Best for Promo Products Distributors?

 

No Time to Stay Up with All Social Media? How to Set Priorities

How are you doing on the Vine?  How about Instagram?  The teens are all about SnapChat. Of course, you thought you were modern, because you have a Pinterest page.  Is Facebook old hat?  Left in the dust?  Where does all of this leave blogging, YouTube, Linkedin, Google+, and Twitter?

My position with Bike 'N Safety Promos is that of marketing consultant.  My daily job and that of my staff is to maximize the use of all marketing resources to optimize the spending of time and money for the largest possible ROI.  I don't just do this form Bike 'N Safety Promos, but for many other companies in various industries.

Our knowledge base is limited, like any person or company, but I will give you a snapshot of what we do know, and how I would prioritize my time investment (in order) were I advising you on social media:

YouTube - I would have a minimum of 50 YouTube videos, and I would be adding five per month.  These could demonstrations on specific products that you sell a lot of or want to sell a lot of.  They could be marketing advice that relates to the use of promotional products, specialties, etc.  They could be industry specific how to videos for events, awards, or promotional approaches. 

Time investment is about 10 hours to learn how to create, edit, and upload a video.  Then maybe 2 hours per video.  If you value your time at $30 an hour, that would mean new videos cost around $60.  One new client and you make it back in a huge way.  These videos will be producing results far into the future.

Blogging - Posting two to three times per week.  Add to the possible lists of subjects for videos, detailed graphs, charts, infograms; content from other blogs, news articles, industry information; posting of all the videos you create and others you find that would be valuable to your client, including product videos from manufacturers.

Time investment is about 10 - 20 hours to learn the ropes of blogging.  Average post should be 700 words, so figure about 1 - 2 hours per post.  Like videos, the content stays live on Google search for years into the future.  For many posts, you might just take a picture of the new product, write a brief description of the benefits (or copy from manufacturer's website), suggest a few uses, and you're done.

Linkedin - Of the supposedly interactive social media options available, I believe this is the best, short term and long term.  Corporate leadership is on Linkedin.  They get Linkedin.  And the basics are pretty straight forward.  The opportunities to connect are limitless and getting better all the time.  Any time you create a new video or blog post, you should do an update on Linkedin to inform your connections.

Time investment is about 15 - 20 hours to really get a great profile set up and take advantage of all the potential groups.  You also want others to give you testimonials, so you will need to write some for others.  Then another 40 hours to create 1000 connections.  These you can do while watching TV.  Once you have 1000 connections, your time commitment will be updating three or so times per week, and any involvement in groups.  You can use Linkedin for recruiting and prospecting.  This may be the most powerful aspect.  The time commitment here is unknown, but it is very likely the ROI will be more than you can imagine.

Facebook - We are not big fans of FB, and do not set up or manage FB for our clients.  The only positive use we can see for our clients who use FB is that they can create a community of "fans" who may be more likely to use you in the future.  Ads, prospecting, etc., we can't find a great ROI.

Twitter - As a way to actually connect and communicate, we definitely don't get it.  As a way to tease folks to your blog, YouTube videos, website or other media, it is invaluable.  We typically send out 48 such Tweets per day using HootSuite.  We have no interest in getting followers.  We are merely trying to reach those who use various Twitter search products.  This approach has led to tripling or more the number of visitors to our blogs.  Most of our clients now have 100-200 page views per day.

Time investment.  It will take you two hours to figure out Hootsuite.  Then it will take 2-3 hours to set up a spread sheet with 50 tweets to upload into the automator.  Then every few days you will need to refresh the system, which takes only 5 minutes or so.

Pinterest - We spent about two years trying to get Pinterest results.  Our conclusion is that it is necessary to run contests, promotions, and sales to actually get a return on the effort.  Pinterest can be a huge time suck without these additional efforts.  We continue to believe that Pinterest could be a good resource, maybe even a great one, but currently the time investment was too large and the ROI too tentative compared to other proven approaches.

Google+ - Currently it our thinking that you need to be on Google+, if only to broadcast to the Public that you have a new blog post, change in your website, event coming up, new Video, Vine, or other new content.  It is also fun to create Meme's with creative sayings or even sales content.  Investment might be 20 minutes a week.  No serious expectations for ROI right now.

SnapChat - We have clients who are successfully using Instagram.  Mostly to feed pictures to other media.  We are not using Vine, but do believe there is potential in using very short visual media for some opportunities in other media, like Google+ and Twitter.  We can't imagine any use for SnapChat, yet.

We would love to hear from you about your thoughts on all of these.  Have you had a major success that others could learn from?