There are many bloggers and brands that just leap onto Twitter, setup an account and start  tweeting. This random approach is fine if you are a person that is doing tweeting for fun and you want to share your rambling rantings to any Joe that  wants to leap into your stream and share sweet nothings.

Don’t be blinded by the shiny new Twitter tool, it needs to be used wisely and if you put in place a planned strategy it will deliver results that will delight and amaze.

The principles of a coherent marketing strategy should not be discarded because social media mania has turned your brain to mush. Twitter in the right hands with the right plan and approach is a very sharp marketing tool.

Twitter is the Perfect Marketing Channel for Bloggers

Top bloggers have now realized that Twitter is a very effective and highly leveraged social media marketing platform to engage with a highly targeted audience and a channel that drives traffic and adds to and enhances their current marketing.

Twitter provides you with a potential audience of over 220 million but those that are interested in your topic of choice will be a subset of that big number. Finding that audience whether it be car lovers, or fashion tragics will be an important component of your strategy as well as achieving goals that are included in your plans.

So Where do you Start?

There are some Twitter basics that are vital when setting up your Twitter account

1. Create a Twitter account that has the same name as your blog domain

2. Include a link to your blog in your settings

3. Include your location

4. Upload a logo or photo that is consistent with your blog branding

5. Include a Twitter background that suits your brand image

6. Include a description in your Twitter settings that include “key words” that are congruent with your blog topic that Google will like.

So you have set up your account which has the  essentials completed, it’s now time to create a Twitter marketing strategy.

Twitter Marketing Strategy Blueprint

1. Define Target Audience

Defining your target audience is the foundation of any business marketing plan and strategy. Examples of a target audience could be ‘Wine’ lovers, it could be females 18-30 who love ‘Fashion’ if you are a fashion blogger.

The target audience can be found on Twitter using two tools that I have found to be effective.

1. Twellow.com

This is the Twitter  ’Yellow Pages’ and you can find categories that match your target market such as ‘Wine’ and you can follow Twitter users in that category ranked by the largest number of Twitter followers to the smallest  within the application by clicking “follow”

2. Tweepi.com

This tool allows you to follow the followers of other people on Twitter. This is very efficient because by following a top blogger’s Twitter  followers in your category you will obtain followers who are pre-qualified.

Now you might be asking what is the point of following people who don’t know you. Well there is a  Twitter etiquette that if someone follows you follow them back (this will vary in percentage it might only be 20% but it is an unwritten rule that is still part of the Twitter ecosystem idiosyncrasies).

When they follow you they will then start seeing your Tweets in their Twitter stream and then they will see your Twitter headline (taken from the title of your blog post) and link and be tempted to click and be taken to your blog.

2. Determine Goals and Objectives

You need to decide what you are trying to achieve with your Twitter channel. Some examples of the types of goals you may want to achieve with your Twitter marketing campaign

• Increase traffic to the blog
• Enhance customer service
• Increase sales whether it is company products or blogger income from ebooks, speaking engagement, consulting or affiliate income.
• Engage with customers and potential prospects. Engagement includes conversations, getting them to click on your  links in your tweet
• Grow Twitter followers
• Enhance and promote the brand

Goals Need to be Specific and Timely to Effective

What will success look like for these goals?

• Will you be looking to increase followers by 10% per month
• Increase traffic to your blog by 5% per month with your Twitter marketing tactics

So putting specific metrics in place for goals, allows you to gauge degrees of success or failure and allows you monitor and adjust your tactics that you implement to achieve those goals.

3. Design, Develop and Implement Tactics to Achieve Goals

Twitter marketing tactics are designed to achieve the goals that you have set out in your strategy.

Here are some examples of Twitter Marketing Tactics to match some goals for the blog. Two goals that are generic for most Twitter marketing for bloggers is to grow Twitter followers and increase traffic to your blog

Twitter Marketing Tactics  for Growing Your Twitter Followers

1. Add highly visible “Follow me on Twitter” Buttons on the top right hand corner of the blog, in emails, newsletters

2. Follow people in your category using the Twitter “Yellow Pages” tool Twellow.com and follow the followers of top bloggers in your industry using the Tweepi.com tool

Twitter Marketing Tactics for Increasing Traffic to the Blog

1. Automate tweeting of your best posts on a regular basis using tools like SocialOomph.com (Professional Edition. paid)

2. Send power Tweets that increase engagement (hence traffic) by 400% by signing up to to Twylah.com and using their “Power Tweet” feature

3. Use # (hash) tags in your tweets to put your tweet into lists people are monitoring on their Twitter apps such as TweetDeck or Hootsuite. For me they are tags such as #SocialMedia #Facebook #SMM (Social Media Marketing)

Some other Tactics

There are a range of other Twitter marketing tactics you can implement to achieve a variety of goals.

1. Increase the Number of Twitter Lists you are on. Twitter lists are where people put you on a list if they think you are relevant to a topic they are interested in. If they think you are relevant for blogging expertise they will put you on a list with the possible title as an example “Blogger Experts”. In essence your list count will grow from 2 core elements.

• Creating great content that educates and solves problems
• Being ubiquitous on the web and publishing your content to social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube  and Slideshare

2. Increasing engagement on Twitter means having more conversations “one to one” either on the public channel (the @ feature) or the private messaging feature of Twitter with “Direct Messages” . These tactics could be activities such as

• Answer questions people ask you on Twitter
• Ask questions of your Twitter followers
• Recognize people on Twitter who retweet your blog posts often using #FollowFridays or #FF

These are just a few of the many tactics you could implement

4. Monitoring and Measuring

Monitoring is not about hard core metrics and is not specific or easy to measure as measuring as you need to be checking for sentiment whether positive or negative. These are what you call the subjective soft metrics that are subjective. Some Twitter tools for managing your Twitter stream where you can monitor different lists, streams and searches include Hootsuite.com and Tweetdeck.com

Monitoring

This is looking at the comments and feedback you are receiving either publicly or privately on Twitter. These are soft metrics and you will need to manually read and monitor this feedback to ensure that the tone is positive and engaged. Check your @mentions regularly to see what is being said.

Measuring

There are a few Twitter measuring tools you should have in your toolbox that will give you the metrics you need to measure your Twitter marketing success.

1. Google Analytics for Measuring Visits to your Blog (or Website)

Here I have used my Google Analytics which has been set up for my blog site to measure how many hits for the last month that Twitter has been the traffic source. This tool is free and can be loaded onto your site by your developer

2.  Tweet Counter

This keeps tabs on the number of Twitter followers, people you are following and,tweets from hourly to six monthly time ranges

There are other tools that can measure clicks on your links such as bit.ly that can provide analysis of what users in what countries are clicking on links from Twitter. For me it reveals interesting stats such as 59% of people clicking on my links are from the US!

5. Modify, Rinse and Repeat

So monitor , measure then adapt, test and keep testing. Twitter and other social media marketing strategies and tactics are still new to the marketing ecosystem but the principles of marketing still apply. Be prepared to experiment and be creative to find out what works and what doesn’t.

What success have you had with your Twitter marketing? I look forward to hearing your stories.

More Reading

• How to Get Targeted Twitter Followers
• The Marketing Secret About Twitter that Most People Don’t Know
• How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter So People Will Read Your Blog
• 30 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures

Image by mharrsch