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ATTRACT
CUSTOMERS
WITH TWITTER
LEARN HOW TO
Optimize Your
Twitter Presence
to Generate
Leads & Sales
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 2
CONTENTS
OPTIMIZE THE BRANDING OF YOUR TWITTER PROFILE // 4
6 STEPS TO OPTIMIZE TWITTER FOR SEARCH // 10
TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS // 16
6 IDEAS TO JUMP START YOUR LEAD GENERATION STRATEGY // 22
HOW TO MEASURE THE ROI OF TWITTER // 28
CONCLUSION & ADDITIONAL RESOURCES // 38
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 3
If it don’t make dollars,
it don’t make sense.
“ ”
The marketing world is transforming into an inbound one. With over 100 million active Twitter accounts, this
social network is becoming omnipresent in the business world. The problem marketers now face isn’t simply
how to use Twitter, but how to turn it into a closed-loop marketing process.
This ebook will delve into how you can take 140-character tweets and turn them into quality leads. Twitter isn’t
solely home to the basic PR-focused route of creating an appealing brand image. It’s a tool for reaching fans of
your business who can become leads, and then sending those potential customers to your sales team. As social
media scientist Dan Zarrella likes to paraphrase DJ Quik, “if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 4
CHAPTER 1
OPTIMIZE THE
BRANDING OF YOUR
TWITTER PROFILE
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 5
SWAG > [swag]
verb, adj.
APPEARANCE, STYLE
Every good business has swag--the way you present your style. And it’s important that your business swag is unique and visible.
Twitter announced official brand pages in the fourth quarter of 2011. Although these pages are not completely rolled out, you
should be prepared to take advantage of their business benefits:
. CALL-TO-ACTION BANNERS
The new Twitter brand pages will enable businesses to add a customer header under their profile bio. This header is the perfect
opportunity to show some more personality--and include a call-to-action (CTA), a link that directs visitors to a desired action you
want them to take.
Gauge what is important to your specific Twitter audience and create a custom CTA. If your company is running a new social
campaign, you can use this header to teach users more about it. In ClearPivot’s case, we could direct users to our ebook on how
to use Twitter for business because that is something our
Twitter followers would benefit from. Here you can see
Disney is using this banner to promote the film Dumbo.
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 6
FEATURED TWEETS
The new brand pages will let you feature a tweet at the top of your
Twitter feed. This is a great way to highlight particular campaigns,
promotions, or offers which you’d like to get more visibility over a
longer period of time. The shelf-life of a regular tweet is short, but you
can extend it with the use of these featured tweets. You can support
these tweets with engaging images and videos to better illustrate your
offer and give your lead generation efforts even more potency.
CUSTOM BACKGROUND
Creating a custom background is one improvement you can make right away. Users who
stumble across your profile will expect to see basic branding, such as
company name, logo, and URLs.
Read the step-by-step instructions below and follow along during this
video tutorial to whip together an awesome custom Twitter background.
Your background can be made with the following measurements using
any design software.
Make
your own
background.
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 7
Open your design software, and create your new background
using the following measurements:
Width: 2048 pixels
Height: 1900 pixels
Resolution: 72 pixels/inch
Note that Twitter backgrounds will not scroll down as users scroll down a profile page. The
text/images on the background will be glued to one spot and will never move.
SETTING THE RIGHT MEASUREMENTS
		
		 DEFINE YOUR DESIGN SPACE
Since a timeline (or feed) of activity exists in the center of every Twitter screen, you need to ensure
that the background is never covered up by this feed. The trick here is to ensure that the text
and images are viewable on any screen size (i.e. the feed doesn’t cut it off on a 13” screen laptop
because the background was made on a 15” screen). To ensure you are working in the “safe spot,”
pull out a marker over the 300-pixel mark on the horizontal ruler in your design software.
To do so, simply click on the vertical ruler and drag until the line touches 300 on the horizontal
ruler. This marker will not appear in your final product, it is simply an indicator for you to keep all
your work inside that selected area. (If you’re working off of a design software that doesn’t have a
marker, simply draw a line, and delete it after).
STEP 1
STEP 2
REMEMBER:
300 PIXELS!
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 8
		 CHOOSE A BACKGROUND COLOR/IMAGE
Paint the entire canvas one color. Alternatively, you could insert an image that takes up the entire background. Just
be sure you own the rights to the image you choose, and consider how it will look when part of it is covered up by the
Twitter feed. A solid color is always a safe option. It’s also easier on the eyes.
ADD YOUR TEXT
At this point, you’re free to write the text and add whatever images you choose to
the 300-pixel wide, left-hand column we created. For ClearPivot’s Twitter background,
we simply added our company name, a brief bio, URLs for our website and social
networks, and our company logo. Nothing too crazy. What you choose should
reflect your company’s identity and should also be simple. Twitter is the world of
140-character updates for a reason. Users are used to brevity, so keep it short.
KEEP
IT SHORT.
STEP 3
STEP 4
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 9
.SAVE YOUR FILE CORRECTLY
Now, save the file to a safe place to ensure you can find the original file again when you need to update
it. Then, save the file again as one of the three file types Twitter accepts: JPG, PNG, or GIF. Be sure that the
image size does not exceed 800K, because that is the maximum file size Twitter accepts.
For those designing in Photoshop, you will automatically be directed to a new prompt after clicking “save,”
which will give you the option of adjusting the image quality. Simply adjust the image quality down one
number, and you will notice an extreme drop in file size, without hurting the quality to a great extent.
UPLOAD YOUR BACKGROUND TO TWITTER	
STEP 5
STEP 6
Lastly, go to your personal or company Twitter profile, and head over to “settings.” This option is listed in
a drop-down menu under your Twitter username on the upper right-hand side. Once you’ve navigated
to “settings,” click the “design” tab and select “change background image.” Upload your background, save
changes, and your beautiful and custom background will appear right before your eyes.
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 10
CHAPTER 2
6 STEPS TO
OPTIMIZE TWITTER
FOR SEARCH
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 11
Now that you’re presentable to the Twitter world, let’s ensure users find you in search engine results as well.
That way, your Twitter handle and updates are assisting your entire marketing program by helping your
business rank in search for industry keywords.
While you want your website to be the first hit—why not have your Twitter posts display a few links below?
When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s okay to be greedy: You don’t want just the number one
spot; you want as many as you can get.
Ensure that your Twitter handle
and updates are helping your
business rank in search.“
”
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 12
TWITTER
SEO
REACH
LENGTH
SPAM
FREE
INBOUND
LINKS
KEYWORDS
IN BIO
KEYWORDS
SUBSET
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 13
Your Twitter handle can be changed at any time, pending the availability. To edit it,
simply go to settings and you’ll see a field that allows you change your username.
Many spammers have Twitter handles that include a set of numbers (e.g., @Name546789). When Google’s algorithm scans
links on Twitter, it often disregards such usernames since there is no way to differentiate between who is real and who isn’t.
Therefore, choose a unique and professional username—and, obviously, your company name, if possible.
Twitter allows 160 characters worth of information to be displayed in your bio. Don’t
riddle this ‘about’ section with industry keywords, but be sure to have at least one in
there to reflect your business in an accurate way and help you improve search visibility.
Keep in mind that search engines often display your Twitter bio in the links’ description on the results
pages, so make it attention grabbing.
MAKE TWITTER HANDLES SPAM-FREE
INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN BIOSTEP 2
STEP 1
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 14
This may sound like a no-brainer, but gaining a following, with high quality followers is
important for SEO purposes. In an interview Google and Bing the two companies said that their
algorithms check the authority of every user tweeting content. “We do compute and use author
quality,” said a Google representative. “We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)”
While your business should have a set of keywords it tries to rank for, all those
keywords may not translate over easily to Twitter – especially if they’re lengthy.
Analyze your keywords through various tools (ClearPivot uses a Keyword tool),
and pick a smaller subset of keywords specifically for Twitter. Use these phrases
throughout the day in your tweets to help boost your rankings.
STEP 3
STEP 4
Get
more
authority.
BUILD YOUR REACH
CREATE A SPECIAL SUBSET OF KEYWORDS
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 15
KEEP TWEET LENGTHS IN RT SAFE ZONE
In order to ensure your SEO-ready keywords are not
deleted when a user shares your tweet via “RT @
username,” you need to make sure tweets have a solid
10-20 characters of legroom. If the danger of losing
your keywords isn’t convincing enough, data shows
that 120-130 character tweets also have the highest
clickthrough rates (CTR).
CREATE YOUR OWN INBOUND LINKS
Now it’s time to make your content remarkable enough that other influencers are retweeting it. Google and Bing
representatives shared that search engines will register the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the
value of the link posted. So search engines are analyzing the number of followers a user who retweets your content
has in order to give the retweeted link its proper value of importance-- the Twitter equivalent of an inbound link.
Posting updates that appeal to influencers will inevitably boost your optimization efforts.
STEP 5
STEP 6
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 16
CHAPTER 3
TWITTER ETIQUETTE
FOR BUSINESS
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 17
Now let’s cut down the amount of time you spend monitoring Twitter and optimize results. Here’s a few ways to do so
without sounding like a robot and constantly replying to every tweet.
REPLY WHEN NECESSARY
While replying back to every tweet with an upbeat “thank you” is sweet, there’s little value in making this a habit. You
should be replying to two types of tweets on an ongoing basis: questions and negative comments.
When you know the answer to a question, answer it. If you don’t know the answer, ask someone at your company who
does. A social media manager is not hired to be in charge
of knowing every little intricacy, but to manage them.
Use your resources well and give Twitterers the proper
responses they deserve.
TIP 1
64% of Twitter are more likely to make
purchases from businesses that answer
their questions on Twitter.
More Likely
As Likely
Less Likely
Source: InboxQ (Survey)
64% OF USERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO
PURCHASE FROM BUSINESSES THAT
ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS ON TWITTER.
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 18
FOLLOW BACK TO ALLOW DIRECT MESSAGING (DM)
Wouldn’t it be great if the tip recommended above could be done privately?
That’s precisely why it’s so important to follow back users who follow you. If
they have a question, most will try to DM you, but Twitter will only allow them
to send direct messages if you are following them.
.PLACE “@REPLY” IN FRONT OF TWEET
Twitter differentiates between a “reply” and a “mention” by where you place the
Twitter handle in the composed tweet. By placing it in the beginning of your update
(e.g, “@numinews I read your...”), Twitter registers the tweet as a reply, because
you are responding directly to the user.
.Placing the Twitter handle elsewhere would make it a mention. So by replying directly to a user,
that tweet will only appear on your profile page and the feeds of people who follow you both. You
may notice users dodging this by including a period in front of their tweet (.@numinews). When
responding to a Twitter user, decide whether you want that tweet to be seen by everyone or not. If
you’re simply saying thank you, there’s no need to make that tweet visible. If someone addresses
you with a positive comment, however, you may want to respond with “Hey @numinews,” so that
the tweet is seen by anyone who is following you.
TIP 2
Message me
privately.
TIP 3
@
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 19
SCHEDULE, THEN MONITOR
Scheduling tweets is simply a step to help minimize the amount of time you spend scripting tweets each day. By
knowing you have a steady amount of content that will automatically publish, you are giving yourself more time to
follow where that content is going, how it’s being discussed, and what leads its generating for you.
ClearPoviot likes utilizing HubSpot’s social media publisher that allows us to schedule multiple tweets at once for our
clients. Think of clever ways to promote your content ahead of time. By allocating ten minutes to composing a batch of
tweets for the day, you can focus on other work throughout the day.
You can also use HootSuite for scheduling.
Now all you have to do is check in occasionally to see what people
are saying and respond accordingly. Much easier than worrying, or
worse, forgetting, that you have to tweet.
TIP 4
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 20
Even equipped with the best practices
shared above, many businesses get
lost in the Twitterverse and end up
using the social tool in a non-customer-
friendly way. This behavior is often due
to some common myth in the Internet
marketing space. Let’s tackle three of these
misconceptions and discuss what’s wrong
with each of them.
LONGER MEMBERSHIP SHORTER MEMBERSHIP
Many users boast about how they were on Twitter before it became “mainstream.” But your Twitter presence is not
measured by time; it’s measured by value. People follow other users to receive information they wouldn’t stumble
across on their own. So make sure to post truly valuable content, not simply spam about your product or service. And
remember, the worth of that engagement has little-to-nothing to do with how long you’ve been present on the site. So
let’s change the variables.
Still, many businesses get
lost in the Twitterverse.
“ ”
MYTH 1
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 21
TWEETING EVERY SECOND 15-25 TWEETS PER DAY
While it’s true that tweets have a short shelf life, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should be a tweeting machine. With
tweets sent every second, your most recent updates move down a users’ feed almost instantly, and constant tweets
can irk your followers.
Our data shows that 15-25 tweets per day is the sweet spot for increasing following. While this sounds overwhelming,
understand that it’s merely the average; you can fluctuate above and below. What’s important to take away is that
posting too much too often can decrease your opportunities to grow reach.
FOLLOWING INDUSTRY LEADERS FOLLOWING CUSTOMERS
Are you following industry leaders to learn from the insights they share? Following competitors to keep an eye on their
messaging? Great! But what about your customers and evangelists?
Many businesses ignore these folks--which makes no sense. If brand loyalists
are willing to publicly show they follow your company and talk about you,
doesn’t it intuitively make sense to send them some love back? Twitter is about
two-way communication. Don’t leave your fans out to dry--they’ll likely just
unfollow you.
MYTH 2
MYTH 3
Follow birds?
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 22
CHAPTER 4
6 IDEAS TO JUMP
START YOUR LEAD
GENERATION
STRATEGY
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 23
The biggest mistake marketers make with Twitter is not realizing it can make you money. And from a business
standpoint, why would we do anything that doesn’t have the ability to show a return on investment (ROI)? Twitter is still
a place of positive brand communication and conversation, but it’s also a place to generate leads.
When it comes down to it, your business needs to test what works best for lead generation. You can’t do everything,
and what works for one business may not work for yours. Here’s a list of ideas we’ve experienced success with. Use a
few as a starting point and build your own strategy by following what works for your business.
TWEET OFFERS
This is the simplest form of lead generation: share your offers! Control how often you share your offers to ensure your
account doesn’t turn into a spam-bot. This will be contingent upon your business. For example, a recruiter will be more
likely to repeatedly share offers to job openings because users will naturally be vested in that opportunity. However,
users may not be as willing to download the same whitepaper about, for instance, improving heating systems. Have
difficulties coming up with content ideas? Here is an ebook that will help you out.
The biggest mistake marketers
make with Twitter is not realizing
it can make you money.
“
”
IDEA 1
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 24
CONNECT YOUR BLOG TO YOUR TWITTER FEED
.If you have a blog, be sure to tweet links to all your posts (which should themselves have call-to-action featured in them).
This is an indirect but effective way to attract new leads. If possible, connect your blog with Twitter so that a post gets
tweeted the minute it’s published automatically. For ClearPivot customers, we can automatically set this up for you.
IDEA 2
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 25
RESPOND WITH LANDING PAGES
.When a user sends a question your way, use the opportunity to give them proper feedback. When possible, and only
when helpful to the user, add a landing page link to your response.
For example, one user tweeted his Marketing Grader grade, adding commentary about how he wanted to improve his
overall score by improving his website presence. @ClearPivot responded with a link to an ebook, “25 Website ‘Must Haves’
for Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales.” The user appreciated our beneficial – not spammy – response. He filled out the form and
received the information he needed to improve his score. Oh, and it looks like we got a lead along the way!
HASHTAGS
.There’s more to hashtags than simply adding a pound sign in front of a word. In
fact, simply adding a hashtag to a tweet isn’t going to give you any results; you
need to integrate them to a marketing campaign.
If you see a trending hashtag that is relevant to your tweet, include it in your updates. If you see a user tweeting with
a particular hashtag, include it in your retweet. This will allow your tweets to reach anyone who is looking at tweets for
that particular hashtag.
When hosting an event, create a hashtag so users can chime in and you aggregate a list of tweets from potential leads.
For example, HubSpot’s weekly video podcast, the Marketing Update, comes paired with the hashtag #MKTGUP. This
allows the hosts to include user commentary in the show and measure how many users are actively tuning in.
IDEA 3
IDEA 4
#
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 26
BUILD REACH
TWITTER CHAT
Twitter chats are the next level of hashtags. From a business standpoint, a Twitter chat is an online discussion between
a brand and the Twitter world. While there is no set format, HubSpot hosts its weekly Twitter chat by asking an expert
from the marketing team about five to seven questions over a half an hour period via the hashtag #inboundchat.
IDEA 5
IDEA 6
What’s the use of following any of the above suggestions if you’re not reaching anyone? This is where you need to
revisit the basics of Twitter and remember to spend time building your following. The more people you’re sending
information to, the higher your chance of generating leads. To learn more ways to attract more social media fans and
followers, read this in-depth post. HubSpot’s software can also give you a quick snapshot of your social media reach:
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 27
@HubSpot will RT what other users are saying and help answer follow-up questions that the expert was unable to get
to. To help push lead generation efforts, each chat comes paired with a certain offer. For example, our chat on Twitter
for Business came paired with, well this ebook! Our @inboundchat about Pinterest was accompanying another ebook.
Keep in mind this platform of discussion may not work for every business, and the only
way to find out is to try it! Figure out how you want to format your chat and give it a few
test runs. Don’t simply host one event and quit. You can also join one of the nearly 600
regularly scheduled Twitter chats on a huge variety of industry topics. Depending on
your business, joining rather than creating a chat may prove more beneficial.
#InboundChat
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 28
CHAPTER 5
HOW TO MEASURE
THE ROI OF TWITTER
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 29
Everything stated in this ebook is absolutely useless unless you’re measuring your
efforts along the way. Only through analyzing Twitter marketing data, you can pull
insights and evaluate if you’re spending your time wisely to benefit your business.
Twitter, however, doesn’t have a seamless way to check your analytics. Closed-loop marketing is what you
should be looking at to track the power of Twitter compared to your other channels. This means tracking
the path of a user clicking a link in a tweet, to visiting a page on your website, to filling out a landing page to
become a lead, and, ultimately, to converting into a customer. And isn’t that ultimately why you’re using Twitter
for business in the first place? To bring in new customers?
Everything stated in this ebook is
absolutely useless unless you’re
measuring your efforts.
“
”
Closed Loop
Marketing
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 30
START USING AN ANALYTICS TOOL
To see how many visitors are coming to your site via Twitter, you’ll need an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics or
HubSpot. While Google Analytics is free, the benefit of using HubSpot is that you can directly see how many leads are
generated through Twitter.
Once you tie your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, like Salesforce and SugarCRM, to your
marketing software you can close the loop between your Twitter marketing efforts and sales. Now there is a two-way
communication between your marketing activities and sales results. When you visit your inbound marketing analytics,
you’ll see not only the visitors, but also the number of leads and customers Twitter brought in. Now you can compare
Twitter marketing to your other channels.
Let’s have a deeper look into getting that ultimate ROI. There are four key steps to the process:
STEP 1
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 31
TRACKING TOKENS FOR DIFFERENT SOURCES
Now that you have an analytics tool, you have to overcome the issue of third-
party Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck. If a Twitterer is sharing a link to your
blog post from such a client, it might not show up in your analytics as a visit
from Twitter, even though that link is ultimately being shared on Twitter. This
can greatly impact your data.
The solution is a tracking token. A tracking token is added to the end of a link, allowing your analytics tool to pool a
certain group of traffic. Different tools employ different tokens, but a generic one looks like this:
/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
By attaching this to your link, anyone who clicks that link is signaling to your analytics tool that they are coming from
Twitter. The same type of tracking tokens apply to different channels, such as email, paid media and referral traffic.
Investigate with your marketing or analytics software to make sure you have the tracking tokens in place and your data
gets assigned to the right categories.
STEP 2
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 32
USE THE RIGHT METRICS
At ClearPivot we look at our analytics constantly. As a data-driven marketer, you should be following your progress
monthly, if not weekly. Here are the metrics we recommend you to keep track of:
TWITTER FOLLOWER MONTH-TO-MONTH GROWTH
By pulling the number of Twitter followers and net new followers, you can get a sense of your Twitter reach growth
monthly. For example, if you were to compute the following growth in March, you would pull the numbers from
February and March:
(MARCH TWITTER FOLLOWERS -- FEBRUARY TWITTER FOLLOWERS)
/ FEBRUARY TWITTER FOLLOWERS = GROWTH %
Tracking this percentage monthly will allow you to see whether your tweeting strategies and campaigns are helping to
boost your reach, or have become a waste of time.
. TWITTER VISITOR-TO-LEAD RATE
Similarly, by pulling Twitter visitor numbers and Twitter lead numbers, you can create another percentage to watch
your lead growth.
TWITTER VISITORS / TWITTER LEADS = VISITOR TO LEAD RATE
STEP 3
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 33
Keeping track of your Twitter visitor-to-lead growth rate will help ensure your social tactics are translating into leads
for your sales team.
If you want to track this growth more closely to see how specific campaigns impact it, you can create daily goals.
Decide on the number of leads you want to generate monthly. Divide that number by the number of business days in
that month, and that will give you your daily goal.
Your monthly goal should sprout from an understanding of what your leads have looked like in recent months. Don’t
set a goal of 1,000 if last month you had 150. You can take the same approach to your other social media channels,
like Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. ClearPivot keeps track of that social media visitor-to-lead rate, so you don’t have
to maintain various excel spreadsheets to get these insights:
If you would like to set this up for your organization, you can sign up for a free 30 minute consultation
and explore how your social media stats look like.
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 34
FURTHER QUALIFY LEADS
You’ve executed the tweeting strategy, set up the proper tracking system, and earned some leads. Now should you
pass these new contacts directly to sales?
Twitter leads, one might argue, are not qualified enough for a conversation with sales. That is where lead nurturing
comes into play. Now you should follow-up with your leads, offer them more of the resources they are interested in
and get them further educated in your product or service. Whether you decide to nurture these new Twitter leads
through simple drip marketing or more sophisticated behavior-based communication, you need to focus on getting
them further down the sales funnel. Here is an example of what that follow-up process might look like if you are using
HubSpot’s marketing software:
STEP 4
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 35
TWITTER COUNTER
One of the fundamental metrics to track is your follower growth. TwitterCounter allows you to easily examine your
follower growth over time. More importantly, you can see your net new number of followers per day by hovering over
each day.
This data can be used to see how many new followers a certain campaign garnered on the day it
launched. If your following remains constant over time, this could indicate that you’re not using
Twitter as well as you could. Your goal should always be to increase followers so that your reach
grows. As stated before, more reach results in more leads and customers.
TOOL 1
In addition to the hard metrics like leads and customers, Twitter engagement is associated with other metrics that are
unique to its environment. For instance, how do you measure the effectiveness of using a hashtag? Or a mention of a
specific campaign?
In this section we will cover a range of free tools that can help you measure Twitter-specific interactions. Read through
and decide which ones provide the information pertinent to your business.
What about the other
engagement metrics?“ ”
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 36
TWITTER ADVANCED SEARCH
While Twitter may not have a beautiful analytics tool, it does have a beautiful advanced search tool.
This search tool allows you to break down your search terms very specifically: by content, users,
location, etc. This feature helps you track the success of a specific tweet and story.
For example, when in 2011 HubSpot acquired marketing automation company Performable they
ran a search looking for tweets with the words “Performable” to see how many people were
interested in the news. In a similar fashion, you can use this search tool when running campaigns to see if your
efforts sparked any conversation.
TOOL 2
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 37
HASHTAGS REVISITED
Another successful way to track how well a certain campaign is performing is to label
it with a hashtag. Sites such as HooteSuite and Hashtracking allow you to see how
many times a hashtag has been used. Furthermore, they can help you track a topic
beyond what you say about it or beyond what you link to.
For example, HubSpot started an #inboundjobs hashtag which any company can
include in their tweets to look for inbound marketing candidates. Potential applicants
(a recruiter’s potential leads) can find jobs via this hashtag. Now we can track the
popularity of inbound job openings and opportunities through the hashtag, even if
we aren’t the ones linking to or talking about a job posting.
BITLY
Many of you know about bit.ly. It not only allows you to shorten links to be Twitter friendly,
but it also provides you with the ability to analyze the number of clicks on that specific link.
#
TOOL 3
TOOL 4
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 38
CONCLUSION
& ADDITIONAL
RESOURCES
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 39
Be smart about the
way you prioritize your
marketing initiatives.
“
”
Hopefully you have picked up by now that Twitter is more than a network for engaging in the conversation and
creating a positive brand image. The days of updating on-the-go tweets and leaving it at that are over. You must
test and analyze all your efforts to understand whether it’s even in your business’ best interest to be vesting
much time on Twitter.
Don’t invest a ton of effort in marketing on Twitter unless you can measure the results of your activities. If your
closed-loop marketing process leads to extremely low leads and ROI, then it’s okay to back off and only maintain
your account rather than use it heavily.
Test the waters on other social media channels and find the one which provides your business with marketing
dollars. In conclusion, be smart about the way you prioritize your marketing initiatives and keep an eye on the
specific benefits this social network can offer your business. Good luck!
HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 40
WWW.CLEARPIVOT.COM
ClearPivot is an inbound marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado. We
map out clear paths to achieve our clients’ business goals, and pivot their
marketing content, campaigns and infrastructure to reach those goals.
http://www.clearpivot.com/marketing-assessment
ABOUT US
Get a free 30-minute inbound marketing
assessment with our marketing specialists.

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Learn How to Attract Customers with Twitter

  • 1. ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER LEARN HOW TO Optimize Your Twitter Presence to Generate Leads & Sales
  • 2. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 2 CONTENTS OPTIMIZE THE BRANDING OF YOUR TWITTER PROFILE // 4 6 STEPS TO OPTIMIZE TWITTER FOR SEARCH // 10 TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS // 16 6 IDEAS TO JUMP START YOUR LEAD GENERATION STRATEGY // 22 HOW TO MEASURE THE ROI OF TWITTER // 28 CONCLUSION & ADDITIONAL RESOURCES // 38
  • 3. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 3 If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense. “ ” The marketing world is transforming into an inbound one. With over 100 million active Twitter accounts, this social network is becoming omnipresent in the business world. The problem marketers now face isn’t simply how to use Twitter, but how to turn it into a closed-loop marketing process. This ebook will delve into how you can take 140-character tweets and turn them into quality leads. Twitter isn’t solely home to the basic PR-focused route of creating an appealing brand image. It’s a tool for reaching fans of your business who can become leads, and then sending those potential customers to your sales team. As social media scientist Dan Zarrella likes to paraphrase DJ Quik, “if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”
  • 4. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 4 CHAPTER 1 OPTIMIZE THE BRANDING OF YOUR TWITTER PROFILE
  • 5. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 5 SWAG > [swag] verb, adj. APPEARANCE, STYLE Every good business has swag--the way you present your style. And it’s important that your business swag is unique and visible. Twitter announced official brand pages in the fourth quarter of 2011. Although these pages are not completely rolled out, you should be prepared to take advantage of their business benefits: . CALL-TO-ACTION BANNERS The new Twitter brand pages will enable businesses to add a customer header under their profile bio. This header is the perfect opportunity to show some more personality--and include a call-to-action (CTA), a link that directs visitors to a desired action you want them to take. Gauge what is important to your specific Twitter audience and create a custom CTA. If your company is running a new social campaign, you can use this header to teach users more about it. In ClearPivot’s case, we could direct users to our ebook on how to use Twitter for business because that is something our Twitter followers would benefit from. Here you can see Disney is using this banner to promote the film Dumbo.
  • 6. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 6 FEATURED TWEETS The new brand pages will let you feature a tweet at the top of your Twitter feed. This is a great way to highlight particular campaigns, promotions, or offers which you’d like to get more visibility over a longer period of time. The shelf-life of a regular tweet is short, but you can extend it with the use of these featured tweets. You can support these tweets with engaging images and videos to better illustrate your offer and give your lead generation efforts even more potency. CUSTOM BACKGROUND Creating a custom background is one improvement you can make right away. Users who stumble across your profile will expect to see basic branding, such as company name, logo, and URLs. Read the step-by-step instructions below and follow along during this video tutorial to whip together an awesome custom Twitter background. Your background can be made with the following measurements using any design software. Make your own background.
  • 7. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 7 Open your design software, and create your new background using the following measurements: Width: 2048 pixels Height: 1900 pixels Resolution: 72 pixels/inch Note that Twitter backgrounds will not scroll down as users scroll down a profile page. The text/images on the background will be glued to one spot and will never move. SETTING THE RIGHT MEASUREMENTS DEFINE YOUR DESIGN SPACE Since a timeline (or feed) of activity exists in the center of every Twitter screen, you need to ensure that the background is never covered up by this feed. The trick here is to ensure that the text and images are viewable on any screen size (i.e. the feed doesn’t cut it off on a 13” screen laptop because the background was made on a 15” screen). To ensure you are working in the “safe spot,” pull out a marker over the 300-pixel mark on the horizontal ruler in your design software. To do so, simply click on the vertical ruler and drag until the line touches 300 on the horizontal ruler. This marker will not appear in your final product, it is simply an indicator for you to keep all your work inside that selected area. (If you’re working off of a design software that doesn’t have a marker, simply draw a line, and delete it after). STEP 1 STEP 2 REMEMBER: 300 PIXELS!
  • 8. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 8 CHOOSE A BACKGROUND COLOR/IMAGE Paint the entire canvas one color. Alternatively, you could insert an image that takes up the entire background. Just be sure you own the rights to the image you choose, and consider how it will look when part of it is covered up by the Twitter feed. A solid color is always a safe option. It’s also easier on the eyes. ADD YOUR TEXT At this point, you’re free to write the text and add whatever images you choose to the 300-pixel wide, left-hand column we created. For ClearPivot’s Twitter background, we simply added our company name, a brief bio, URLs for our website and social networks, and our company logo. Nothing too crazy. What you choose should reflect your company’s identity and should also be simple. Twitter is the world of 140-character updates for a reason. Users are used to brevity, so keep it short. KEEP IT SHORT. STEP 3 STEP 4
  • 9. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 9 .SAVE YOUR FILE CORRECTLY Now, save the file to a safe place to ensure you can find the original file again when you need to update it. Then, save the file again as one of the three file types Twitter accepts: JPG, PNG, or GIF. Be sure that the image size does not exceed 800K, because that is the maximum file size Twitter accepts. For those designing in Photoshop, you will automatically be directed to a new prompt after clicking “save,” which will give you the option of adjusting the image quality. Simply adjust the image quality down one number, and you will notice an extreme drop in file size, without hurting the quality to a great extent. UPLOAD YOUR BACKGROUND TO TWITTER STEP 5 STEP 6 Lastly, go to your personal or company Twitter profile, and head over to “settings.” This option is listed in a drop-down menu under your Twitter username on the upper right-hand side. Once you’ve navigated to “settings,” click the “design” tab and select “change background image.” Upload your background, save changes, and your beautiful and custom background will appear right before your eyes.
  • 10. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 10 CHAPTER 2 6 STEPS TO OPTIMIZE TWITTER FOR SEARCH
  • 11. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 11 Now that you’re presentable to the Twitter world, let’s ensure users find you in search engine results as well. That way, your Twitter handle and updates are assisting your entire marketing program by helping your business rank in search for industry keywords. While you want your website to be the first hit—why not have your Twitter posts display a few links below? When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s okay to be greedy: You don’t want just the number one spot; you want as many as you can get. Ensure that your Twitter handle and updates are helping your business rank in search.“ ”
  • 12. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 12 TWITTER SEO REACH LENGTH SPAM FREE INBOUND LINKS KEYWORDS IN BIO KEYWORDS SUBSET
  • 13. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 13 Your Twitter handle can be changed at any time, pending the availability. To edit it, simply go to settings and you’ll see a field that allows you change your username. Many spammers have Twitter handles that include a set of numbers (e.g., @Name546789). When Google’s algorithm scans links on Twitter, it often disregards such usernames since there is no way to differentiate between who is real and who isn’t. Therefore, choose a unique and professional username—and, obviously, your company name, if possible. Twitter allows 160 characters worth of information to be displayed in your bio. Don’t riddle this ‘about’ section with industry keywords, but be sure to have at least one in there to reflect your business in an accurate way and help you improve search visibility. Keep in mind that search engines often display your Twitter bio in the links’ description on the results pages, so make it attention grabbing. MAKE TWITTER HANDLES SPAM-FREE INCLUDE KEYWORDS IN BIOSTEP 2 STEP 1
  • 14. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 14 This may sound like a no-brainer, but gaining a following, with high quality followers is important for SEO purposes. In an interview Google and Bing the two companies said that their algorithms check the authority of every user tweeting content. “We do compute and use author quality,” said a Google representative. “We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)” While your business should have a set of keywords it tries to rank for, all those keywords may not translate over easily to Twitter – especially if they’re lengthy. Analyze your keywords through various tools (ClearPivot uses a Keyword tool), and pick a smaller subset of keywords specifically for Twitter. Use these phrases throughout the day in your tweets to help boost your rankings. STEP 3 STEP 4 Get more authority. BUILD YOUR REACH CREATE A SPECIAL SUBSET OF KEYWORDS
  • 15. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 15 KEEP TWEET LENGTHS IN RT SAFE ZONE In order to ensure your SEO-ready keywords are not deleted when a user shares your tweet via “RT @ username,” you need to make sure tweets have a solid 10-20 characters of legroom. If the danger of losing your keywords isn’t convincing enough, data shows that 120-130 character tweets also have the highest clickthrough rates (CTR). CREATE YOUR OWN INBOUND LINKS Now it’s time to make your content remarkable enough that other influencers are retweeting it. Google and Bing representatives shared that search engines will register the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the value of the link posted. So search engines are analyzing the number of followers a user who retweets your content has in order to give the retweeted link its proper value of importance-- the Twitter equivalent of an inbound link. Posting updates that appeal to influencers will inevitably boost your optimization efforts. STEP 5 STEP 6
  • 16. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 16 CHAPTER 3 TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS
  • 17. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 17 Now let’s cut down the amount of time you spend monitoring Twitter and optimize results. Here’s a few ways to do so without sounding like a robot and constantly replying to every tweet. REPLY WHEN NECESSARY While replying back to every tweet with an upbeat “thank you” is sweet, there’s little value in making this a habit. You should be replying to two types of tweets on an ongoing basis: questions and negative comments. When you know the answer to a question, answer it. If you don’t know the answer, ask someone at your company who does. A social media manager is not hired to be in charge of knowing every little intricacy, but to manage them. Use your resources well and give Twitterers the proper responses they deserve. TIP 1 64% of Twitter are more likely to make purchases from businesses that answer their questions on Twitter. More Likely As Likely Less Likely Source: InboxQ (Survey) 64% OF USERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO PURCHASE FROM BUSINESSES THAT ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS ON TWITTER.
  • 18. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 18 FOLLOW BACK TO ALLOW DIRECT MESSAGING (DM) Wouldn’t it be great if the tip recommended above could be done privately? That’s precisely why it’s so important to follow back users who follow you. If they have a question, most will try to DM you, but Twitter will only allow them to send direct messages if you are following them. .PLACE “@REPLY” IN FRONT OF TWEET Twitter differentiates between a “reply” and a “mention” by where you place the Twitter handle in the composed tweet. By placing it in the beginning of your update (e.g, “@numinews I read your...”), Twitter registers the tweet as a reply, because you are responding directly to the user. .Placing the Twitter handle elsewhere would make it a mention. So by replying directly to a user, that tweet will only appear on your profile page and the feeds of people who follow you both. You may notice users dodging this by including a period in front of their tweet (.@numinews). When responding to a Twitter user, decide whether you want that tweet to be seen by everyone or not. If you’re simply saying thank you, there’s no need to make that tweet visible. If someone addresses you with a positive comment, however, you may want to respond with “Hey @numinews,” so that the tweet is seen by anyone who is following you. TIP 2 Message me privately. TIP 3 @
  • 19. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 19 SCHEDULE, THEN MONITOR Scheduling tweets is simply a step to help minimize the amount of time you spend scripting tweets each day. By knowing you have a steady amount of content that will automatically publish, you are giving yourself more time to follow where that content is going, how it’s being discussed, and what leads its generating for you. ClearPoviot likes utilizing HubSpot’s social media publisher that allows us to schedule multiple tweets at once for our clients. Think of clever ways to promote your content ahead of time. By allocating ten minutes to composing a batch of tweets for the day, you can focus on other work throughout the day. You can also use HootSuite for scheduling. Now all you have to do is check in occasionally to see what people are saying and respond accordingly. Much easier than worrying, or worse, forgetting, that you have to tweet. TIP 4
  • 20. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 20 Even equipped with the best practices shared above, many businesses get lost in the Twitterverse and end up using the social tool in a non-customer- friendly way. This behavior is often due to some common myth in the Internet marketing space. Let’s tackle three of these misconceptions and discuss what’s wrong with each of them. LONGER MEMBERSHIP SHORTER MEMBERSHIP Many users boast about how they were on Twitter before it became “mainstream.” But your Twitter presence is not measured by time; it’s measured by value. People follow other users to receive information they wouldn’t stumble across on their own. So make sure to post truly valuable content, not simply spam about your product or service. And remember, the worth of that engagement has little-to-nothing to do with how long you’ve been present on the site. So let’s change the variables. Still, many businesses get lost in the Twitterverse. “ ” MYTH 1
  • 21. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 21 TWEETING EVERY SECOND 15-25 TWEETS PER DAY While it’s true that tweets have a short shelf life, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should be a tweeting machine. With tweets sent every second, your most recent updates move down a users’ feed almost instantly, and constant tweets can irk your followers. Our data shows that 15-25 tweets per day is the sweet spot for increasing following. While this sounds overwhelming, understand that it’s merely the average; you can fluctuate above and below. What’s important to take away is that posting too much too often can decrease your opportunities to grow reach. FOLLOWING INDUSTRY LEADERS FOLLOWING CUSTOMERS Are you following industry leaders to learn from the insights they share? Following competitors to keep an eye on their messaging? Great! But what about your customers and evangelists? Many businesses ignore these folks--which makes no sense. If brand loyalists are willing to publicly show they follow your company and talk about you, doesn’t it intuitively make sense to send them some love back? Twitter is about two-way communication. Don’t leave your fans out to dry--they’ll likely just unfollow you. MYTH 2 MYTH 3 Follow birds?
  • 22. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 22 CHAPTER 4 6 IDEAS TO JUMP START YOUR LEAD GENERATION STRATEGY
  • 23. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 23 The biggest mistake marketers make with Twitter is not realizing it can make you money. And from a business standpoint, why would we do anything that doesn’t have the ability to show a return on investment (ROI)? Twitter is still a place of positive brand communication and conversation, but it’s also a place to generate leads. When it comes down to it, your business needs to test what works best for lead generation. You can’t do everything, and what works for one business may not work for yours. Here’s a list of ideas we’ve experienced success with. Use a few as a starting point and build your own strategy by following what works for your business. TWEET OFFERS This is the simplest form of lead generation: share your offers! Control how often you share your offers to ensure your account doesn’t turn into a spam-bot. This will be contingent upon your business. For example, a recruiter will be more likely to repeatedly share offers to job openings because users will naturally be vested in that opportunity. However, users may not be as willing to download the same whitepaper about, for instance, improving heating systems. Have difficulties coming up with content ideas? Here is an ebook that will help you out. The biggest mistake marketers make with Twitter is not realizing it can make you money. “ ” IDEA 1
  • 24. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 24 CONNECT YOUR BLOG TO YOUR TWITTER FEED .If you have a blog, be sure to tweet links to all your posts (which should themselves have call-to-action featured in them). This is an indirect but effective way to attract new leads. If possible, connect your blog with Twitter so that a post gets tweeted the minute it’s published automatically. For ClearPivot customers, we can automatically set this up for you. IDEA 2
  • 25. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 25 RESPOND WITH LANDING PAGES .When a user sends a question your way, use the opportunity to give them proper feedback. When possible, and only when helpful to the user, add a landing page link to your response. For example, one user tweeted his Marketing Grader grade, adding commentary about how he wanted to improve his overall score by improving his website presence. @ClearPivot responded with a link to an ebook, “25 Website ‘Must Haves’ for Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales.” The user appreciated our beneficial – not spammy – response. He filled out the form and received the information he needed to improve his score. Oh, and it looks like we got a lead along the way! HASHTAGS .There’s more to hashtags than simply adding a pound sign in front of a word. In fact, simply adding a hashtag to a tweet isn’t going to give you any results; you need to integrate them to a marketing campaign. If you see a trending hashtag that is relevant to your tweet, include it in your updates. If you see a user tweeting with a particular hashtag, include it in your retweet. This will allow your tweets to reach anyone who is looking at tweets for that particular hashtag. When hosting an event, create a hashtag so users can chime in and you aggregate a list of tweets from potential leads. For example, HubSpot’s weekly video podcast, the Marketing Update, comes paired with the hashtag #MKTGUP. This allows the hosts to include user commentary in the show and measure how many users are actively tuning in. IDEA 3 IDEA 4 #
  • 26. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 26 BUILD REACH TWITTER CHAT Twitter chats are the next level of hashtags. From a business standpoint, a Twitter chat is an online discussion between a brand and the Twitter world. While there is no set format, HubSpot hosts its weekly Twitter chat by asking an expert from the marketing team about five to seven questions over a half an hour period via the hashtag #inboundchat. IDEA 5 IDEA 6 What’s the use of following any of the above suggestions if you’re not reaching anyone? This is where you need to revisit the basics of Twitter and remember to spend time building your following. The more people you’re sending information to, the higher your chance of generating leads. To learn more ways to attract more social media fans and followers, read this in-depth post. HubSpot’s software can also give you a quick snapshot of your social media reach:
  • 27. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 27 @HubSpot will RT what other users are saying and help answer follow-up questions that the expert was unable to get to. To help push lead generation efforts, each chat comes paired with a certain offer. For example, our chat on Twitter for Business came paired with, well this ebook! Our @inboundchat about Pinterest was accompanying another ebook. Keep in mind this platform of discussion may not work for every business, and the only way to find out is to try it! Figure out how you want to format your chat and give it a few test runs. Don’t simply host one event and quit. You can also join one of the nearly 600 regularly scheduled Twitter chats on a huge variety of industry topics. Depending on your business, joining rather than creating a chat may prove more beneficial. #InboundChat
  • 28. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 28 CHAPTER 5 HOW TO MEASURE THE ROI OF TWITTER
  • 29. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 29 Everything stated in this ebook is absolutely useless unless you’re measuring your efforts along the way. Only through analyzing Twitter marketing data, you can pull insights and evaluate if you’re spending your time wisely to benefit your business. Twitter, however, doesn’t have a seamless way to check your analytics. Closed-loop marketing is what you should be looking at to track the power of Twitter compared to your other channels. This means tracking the path of a user clicking a link in a tweet, to visiting a page on your website, to filling out a landing page to become a lead, and, ultimately, to converting into a customer. And isn’t that ultimately why you’re using Twitter for business in the first place? To bring in new customers? Everything stated in this ebook is absolutely useless unless you’re measuring your efforts. “ ” Closed Loop Marketing
  • 30. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 30 START USING AN ANALYTICS TOOL To see how many visitors are coming to your site via Twitter, you’ll need an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics or HubSpot. While Google Analytics is free, the benefit of using HubSpot is that you can directly see how many leads are generated through Twitter. Once you tie your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, like Salesforce and SugarCRM, to your marketing software you can close the loop between your Twitter marketing efforts and sales. Now there is a two-way communication between your marketing activities and sales results. When you visit your inbound marketing analytics, you’ll see not only the visitors, but also the number of leads and customers Twitter brought in. Now you can compare Twitter marketing to your other channels. Let’s have a deeper look into getting that ultimate ROI. There are four key steps to the process: STEP 1
  • 31. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 31 TRACKING TOKENS FOR DIFFERENT SOURCES Now that you have an analytics tool, you have to overcome the issue of third- party Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck. If a Twitterer is sharing a link to your blog post from such a client, it might not show up in your analytics as a visit from Twitter, even though that link is ultimately being shared on Twitter. This can greatly impact your data. The solution is a tracking token. A tracking token is added to the end of a link, allowing your analytics tool to pool a certain group of traffic. Different tools employ different tokens, but a generic one looks like this: /?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter By attaching this to your link, anyone who clicks that link is signaling to your analytics tool that they are coming from Twitter. The same type of tracking tokens apply to different channels, such as email, paid media and referral traffic. Investigate with your marketing or analytics software to make sure you have the tracking tokens in place and your data gets assigned to the right categories. STEP 2
  • 32. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 32 USE THE RIGHT METRICS At ClearPivot we look at our analytics constantly. As a data-driven marketer, you should be following your progress monthly, if not weekly. Here are the metrics we recommend you to keep track of: TWITTER FOLLOWER MONTH-TO-MONTH GROWTH By pulling the number of Twitter followers and net new followers, you can get a sense of your Twitter reach growth monthly. For example, if you were to compute the following growth in March, you would pull the numbers from February and March: (MARCH TWITTER FOLLOWERS -- FEBRUARY TWITTER FOLLOWERS) / FEBRUARY TWITTER FOLLOWERS = GROWTH % Tracking this percentage monthly will allow you to see whether your tweeting strategies and campaigns are helping to boost your reach, or have become a waste of time. . TWITTER VISITOR-TO-LEAD RATE Similarly, by pulling Twitter visitor numbers and Twitter lead numbers, you can create another percentage to watch your lead growth. TWITTER VISITORS / TWITTER LEADS = VISITOR TO LEAD RATE STEP 3
  • 33. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 33 Keeping track of your Twitter visitor-to-lead growth rate will help ensure your social tactics are translating into leads for your sales team. If you want to track this growth more closely to see how specific campaigns impact it, you can create daily goals. Decide on the number of leads you want to generate monthly. Divide that number by the number of business days in that month, and that will give you your daily goal. Your monthly goal should sprout from an understanding of what your leads have looked like in recent months. Don’t set a goal of 1,000 if last month you had 150. You can take the same approach to your other social media channels, like Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. ClearPivot keeps track of that social media visitor-to-lead rate, so you don’t have to maintain various excel spreadsheets to get these insights: If you would like to set this up for your organization, you can sign up for a free 30 minute consultation and explore how your social media stats look like.
  • 34. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 34 FURTHER QUALIFY LEADS You’ve executed the tweeting strategy, set up the proper tracking system, and earned some leads. Now should you pass these new contacts directly to sales? Twitter leads, one might argue, are not qualified enough for a conversation with sales. That is where lead nurturing comes into play. Now you should follow-up with your leads, offer them more of the resources they are interested in and get them further educated in your product or service. Whether you decide to nurture these new Twitter leads through simple drip marketing or more sophisticated behavior-based communication, you need to focus on getting them further down the sales funnel. Here is an example of what that follow-up process might look like if you are using HubSpot’s marketing software: STEP 4
  • 35. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 35 TWITTER COUNTER One of the fundamental metrics to track is your follower growth. TwitterCounter allows you to easily examine your follower growth over time. More importantly, you can see your net new number of followers per day by hovering over each day. This data can be used to see how many new followers a certain campaign garnered on the day it launched. If your following remains constant over time, this could indicate that you’re not using Twitter as well as you could. Your goal should always be to increase followers so that your reach grows. As stated before, more reach results in more leads and customers. TOOL 1 In addition to the hard metrics like leads and customers, Twitter engagement is associated with other metrics that are unique to its environment. For instance, how do you measure the effectiveness of using a hashtag? Or a mention of a specific campaign? In this section we will cover a range of free tools that can help you measure Twitter-specific interactions. Read through and decide which ones provide the information pertinent to your business. What about the other engagement metrics?“ ”
  • 36. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 36 TWITTER ADVANCED SEARCH While Twitter may not have a beautiful analytics tool, it does have a beautiful advanced search tool. This search tool allows you to break down your search terms very specifically: by content, users, location, etc. This feature helps you track the success of a specific tweet and story. For example, when in 2011 HubSpot acquired marketing automation company Performable they ran a search looking for tweets with the words “Performable” to see how many people were interested in the news. In a similar fashion, you can use this search tool when running campaigns to see if your efforts sparked any conversation. TOOL 2
  • 37. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 37 HASHTAGS REVISITED Another successful way to track how well a certain campaign is performing is to label it with a hashtag. Sites such as HooteSuite and Hashtracking allow you to see how many times a hashtag has been used. Furthermore, they can help you track a topic beyond what you say about it or beyond what you link to. For example, HubSpot started an #inboundjobs hashtag which any company can include in their tweets to look for inbound marketing candidates. Potential applicants (a recruiter’s potential leads) can find jobs via this hashtag. Now we can track the popularity of inbound job openings and opportunities through the hashtag, even if we aren’t the ones linking to or talking about a job posting. BITLY Many of you know about bit.ly. It not only allows you to shorten links to be Twitter friendly, but it also provides you with the ability to analyze the number of clicks on that specific link. # TOOL 3 TOOL 4
  • 38. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 38 CONCLUSION & ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
  • 39. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 39 Be smart about the way you prioritize your marketing initiatives. “ ” Hopefully you have picked up by now that Twitter is more than a network for engaging in the conversation and creating a positive brand image. The days of updating on-the-go tweets and leaving it at that are over. You must test and analyze all your efforts to understand whether it’s even in your business’ best interest to be vesting much time on Twitter. Don’t invest a ton of effort in marketing on Twitter unless you can measure the results of your activities. If your closed-loop marketing process leads to extremely low leads and ROI, then it’s okay to back off and only maintain your account rather than use it heavily. Test the waters on other social media channels and find the one which provides your business with marketing dollars. In conclusion, be smart about the way you prioritize your marketing initiatives and keep an eye on the specific benefits this social network can offer your business. Good luck!
  • 40. HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS WITH TWITTER / / 40 WWW.CLEARPIVOT.COM ClearPivot is an inbound marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado. We map out clear paths to achieve our clients’ business goals, and pivot their marketing content, campaigns and infrastructure to reach those goals. http://www.clearpivot.com/marketing-assessment ABOUT US Get a free 30-minute inbound marketing assessment with our marketing specialists.