10 Genius Ways To Leverage Your Brand, Increase Sales, & Dominate Your Market On Twitter

by Lawton Chiles on July 14, 2009

Seeing that no one is ever satisfied with their business success (and my laptop has a sticky space-bar), I’ve decided to hash out 10 ways to use Twitter as a marketing springboard.

May you go father, faster, and yes, even have whiter teeth after reading this.

1. The Sting effect.

Sting rarely releases an album these days, but when he does, at least the fans know what they’re getting: high-brow pop with great melodies and thoughts. Build up a Twitter personality- are you sarcastic, witty, charming, annoying, crazy, boring?

Stand for something each time you tweet- and have others KNOW you for it.

2. Don’t whine unless it’s important

A TON of people on Twitter complain all the time. Heck, complain once a day. Then, multiply that by about 300 tweets, which is what you probably see or read in a day. That’s a lot of negativity for your reader or audience to sift through. Be different-be positive. That way, when you do see something wrong, people will stand up and take notice

3. Follow Netflix’s Lead

If you have a PC or a Mac with Intel chip, Netflix gives you 12,000 or so On-Demand, Watch-Right-Now movies. Why not copy their move:

What I mean is this…

Offer your followers not just a blog post, but also a PDF of an important post, or a video, or all 3. Granted, you don’t have to do this all the time, just for “Cornerstone Content”, as Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com calls it.
Give people the choice to learn and use content how THEY want it.

4. Get into podcasting

Most people expect a link on Twitter to go to some form of text-based blog. Shake up their patterns by turning that link into a podcast or Ustream.TV event. Blam! Instant awesomeness!

5. Keep Asking Advice with this awesome tool

One thing I have started to do is use Twtpoll.com for some quick polling. This does two things very easily:

One, it allows you to keep in touch with what your audience wants from you, your company and your products.

Two, it gives people a sense that you value their opinion and thoughts, which you should

6. Take email to the next level

If you use Aweber or even Constant Contact, there usually is a HTML link where it says, “Can’t read this email? Click here.”

Aweber has a Add this to your Twitter account link at the very bottom. Constant Contact has that can’t read this link. Use that to post to Twitter, asking people what they think.

Hot Video Tip-Get My Email Marketing Blind Spots Video Here

7. Don’t Auto-DM people your affiliate link

Look even I did this at first, and then I realized it really doesn’t work. I need to remove my 3 rotating Auto-DM Twitter messages. One of them promotes a product.

8. Bookmark Your Content

Get a system set up like on Delicious or StumbleUpon, and bookmark your stuff. You can get a few accounts and bookmark them a couple of different ways with different headlines and the like. TIP- If you get a tool like Ping.fm, don’t just bookmark random stuff, bookmark great content there, because Ping.FM will post to a ton of other Web 2.0 sites.

9. Let Your Facebook Friends Know About Your Twitter Feed

This is pretty groovy. You can go into your Facebook page or profile and add your Twitter URL into your Status update. THIS IS IMPORTANT: Do not add your RSS feed or your Twitter Feed into your Facebook profile. Best to keep MOST of that noise separate.

Agree? Disagree?

10. Slow Down, Breath, and Learn

The whole idea of Twitter is to slow it down. Sure you can auto-post content and post too much of even stellar stuff (I’ve done it!), but the key is to learn, post life-snapshots, and tons of videos.

Twitter loves video. Also, Twitter loves quotes too.