Are you using Twitter to market your business?

[vangogh]

I guess it does depend on where you are and how large the local community is. How far away is the next community? I'm guessing it's not right down the block, but is it conceivable that you could get business from neighboring towns?

The SEO benefits still apply no matter how small the community, though maybe you don't have the numbers of competitors where it's necessary. Is it possible media from a larger city could notice you and could that lead to more business for you? How about your clients? Could you promote them through Twitter and in so doing raise your prices? I would imagine some in your area do business online or at least outside the locality.

[Patrysha]

We are the hub (or rather one of two hub type towns) in the area. There's the Capital city about 1 1/2 away southeast of us and a large town about 3 hours northwest of us. Neighbouring towns around here are all smaller...mostly farming type communities with some resource base. There are two lucrative nuggets that my printer client and I are going to partner up to crack likely in the fall, plus there will be some pull from the other communities in the area. So yeah, that is on the agenda but I can only do so much at once...lol

The field is wide open for me to play in.

I don't have a whole lot of competition (outside of the person who thinks he's competition)...I have awareness issues...and I'm working on those :-) I have only been in business here for a year, only lived in the community for just under 3 years. I am not complaining about where I'm at.

This is a tough town in some ways because there is this perception that to be good you have to come from the city - meanwhile city groups are calling me to present because they do perceive me as knowledgeable. There's also still a bit of an undercurrent of chauvinism too. I am breaking through but it takes time. It's just a matter of doing my thing and getting it out there that there is world class talent in this town.

Yes I can put myself on the city radar as far as media goes. I've already been developing contacts, but I can't quite yet because my father in law lives there and still doesn't know that I've quit my job (LONG STORY!!) But hubby is going to have to fess up soon because I'm slated to be in a national magazine in October and my fil's wife just might read that magazine or her daughter or any number of people that she might know...it's not like I have a common name...

My huge problem with SEO right now is what am I? Am I a marketer, a publicist, a copywriter, a strategist, a consultant, a speaker, an author...I am all of those and more :-) what I am not is thoroughly versed in SEO...though talking to Aaron Wall last year when I interviewed him for Internet Based Moms did help me break through a couple of barriers...

I am utilizing twitter to promote myself and my client...raising my rates right now though is a bit tricky. I charge slightly more than the market will bear with one to one clients (though I do give away too much and I have to curb that more) - the big shopping promotion project I misjudged a bit on the expenses and on the number of participating sponsors that would get involved (however I am still working on it and that may turn around within the next week...especially with the data I've been accumulating...) if everything had gone according to my projections it would have been a profit that I could be happy with. As it is...it's a great way to make everyone in town know who I am and what I am capable of and it can all build to the next promotion.

[vangogh]

If you have an awareness issue then the buzz of social media should be able to help. Granted your town may not be highly represented on Twitter, but there's no reason to think the same % of people using it worldwide don't apply to your area. The more times people come across your name the more aware they'll be of your existence.

With SEO don't think of it as having to define yourself as one thing or another. What you're looking for is what people might search for to find you. One person might look for a marketer and one person might look for a publicist. What you might want to do is pick one set of keyword phrases. Maybe you find phrases based around the theme of being a publicist. Work to get search visibility around that theme. Then start working to gain search visibility around the theme marketer or copywriter. That might mean a new section on your site or even a new site.

For example I did a really quick search for keywords on the work 'publicist' and one phrase some people search for is 'finding a publicist'

Assuming you wanted to rank for that phrase you could write an article about how to find a publicist. Make sure to use the phrase as well as similar phrases in your copy

Finding a publicist
how to find a publicist
a publicist can be found by
found a publicist
etc

You create content around the basic phrase using variations of that phrase in your copy. Odds are if you write naturally you'll do this by default. You'd want to use the exact phrase in your page title.

Then you'd have a page optimized for that phrase which you could work at ranking.

[orion_joel]

I think i maybe didn't really word my example very well. I will try again.

What i was really meaning is that while there is the local potential available the size of the local market that you may be able to attract via social media like Twitter and Facebook, is going to be greatly dwarfed by the potential market outside your actual business area.

The comparison i would give may be something like Amazon's compared to a single location privately owned bookstore in a small town. I don't know if Amazon has anything to do with marketing via Twitter, however if they did, all they would really need to do is drive traffic to their website. Which is easy they have a global market and will pretty much sell their products to anyone. But when it comes to the bookstore in a small town, the same is not true, yes they may be able to build a small following of people from the town, however this is really an unknown quantity, and depending on how they are using say something like Twitter, could potentially end up with a whole lot of inquires that are well outside their target market. This is not to say that they could not deal with other people outside of the town that they are located in but this could create a much different burden to their business then it would to a company like Amazon.

The same could be said for a comparison between Dell and a local computer store.

[vangogh]

could potentially end up with a whole lot of inquires that are well outside their target market...this could create a much different burden to their business then it would to a company like Amazon.

I'm not sure there would be any burden created. What kind of inquiries would they really get? And how hard is it to respond to something over Twitter? And if a bookstore is genuinely getting inquiries from across the country it would seem to me an opportunity to do business online. Books are something very easy to sell online so if anything it could open up new markets to the store.

Using SteveB as an example. I realize he's not planning on jumping on Twitter anytime soon, but let's say he did. I highly doubt he's going to be flooded with requests to install fences for people outside his area. Is it possible he'd be asked general questions about pet fencing? Absolutely, but I don't see how they'd be hard to deal with. He could answer via Twitter, which would mean he'd be answering the questions of many followers at once. He could answer via a blog post and again answer many questions at once.

While most of his followers and readers would never become customers it would still set Steve up as even more of an expert locally which would lead to more customers.

I think a good analogy is a local shop being featured on the national news. Most of the people watching that news program aren't going to be visiting the local store, but many local people will still be watching that national news program and even for those that aren't the brand of the business will still spread and get back to them.

[vangogh]

Just found a link to a free PDF with Twitter tips and thought readers of this thread might find it interesting. I downloaded it, but I haven't read it yet.

The site Small Business Trends asked their readers to share tips and 137 of those tips were compiled into the PDF.

[graphic designer]

Yes, I have had some success with Twitter. I found a semi famous comedian as a potential client. Hope this helpful to you with your marketing ploy.

[KristineS]

We use Twitter for one of our companies and I use it for an organization I started as well.

When it comes to the company, success has been decent. I think people are a little wary of companies that have Twitter accounts since they think it might all be spam and "buy,buy, buy". I felt like I had to work a little harder to get people to talk back to me. Once they say I wanted to participate and had good stuff to say, interest and openness increased dramatically.

Twitter has been a huge success when it comes to the organization that I run. It is an organization for outdoor bloggers and we passed the 200 member mark a few weeks ago. Twitter has been a great way to get the word out and to make contact with other bloggers that I otherwise would not have known existed. Once I started a Twitter account for this organization, interest and the membership jumped dramatically.

[eborg9]

In the past 2 months I have started 4 different Twitter accounts linked to 4 different sites.

One is brand new, so it has hardly any followers.

2 are less than a month old with over 1,000 followers, and they do send some traffic to their respective sites and a few sales have been made. These sites are basically on idle until I can get around to actually SEOing the sites and promoting them more. The plan is, when I get started on them (marketing) that I will have a Twitter base to play with and get me going.

Another has 2,000 followers, but I have been careful to target as much as possible. It does send traffic to it's intended domain, some days Twitter is my main referral depending on the post that day.

I tend to stay away from "get a lot of followers" schemes. A lot of followers won't do me any good. I need people interested in what I am selling, besides, I am so sick of auto responses on Twitter that say "Thanks for the follow. Learn how I got 10,000 new followers in just a few days, click here". I don't do that to people anymore, and have retained just about everyone....it is very rare that I will drop a follower since I stopped that madness. It seems like it's 80% of the new people on Twitter. I probably could have more followers, but I make it a point to block those people out and not follow them..all they are going to do is spam me with offers.

Most of what I do on Twitter is automated (who has the time), but I have my accounts up and running on Tweet Deck, or Tweet Grid most days (that's where multiple monitors comes in handy ), to respond to people and not look like an autobot. It actually works out pretty well....my sports account gets a lot of retweets from MLB and Different team accounts (the real ones).

Only on one account do I actually tweet my own stuff, but that was it's purpose from the beginning and was made perfectly clear. I also do giveaways and run contests on that account.

Has Twitter made me money ? In a way. I can trace direct sales, and traffic from Twitter, but more than anything it helps give me branding to people I would have otherwise not found..and it's kind of a nice way to pass the time, even when you are working.

On average I'll pick up 7-30 new followers (targeted) a day, per account, but I do drop a lot of people who are just looking for followers.
For instance, I have one account that is all Detroit Sports...I only want to talk to people that are from Detroit, Fans of Detroit Teams, Fans of teams that hate Detroit Teams, Fans who used to like Detroit Teams, People who went to college in Michigan, Sports fans in general, and so on. I don't have time to talk to people about marketing, or blogging on that one...It's for sports.

When you try and target your followers, it is much easier to keep up your responses across many accounts because you aren't wasting time talking politics on your NASCAR account, or talking about Sarah Palin on your Dance Music account...but that also will be determined by what you tweet, and keeping your accounts separate.

In my short time on Twitter I have learned that you get more traffic by not trying to get traffic.

[vangogh]

n my short time on Twitter I have learned that you get more traffic by not trying to get traffic.

Funny how that works out. I think all social media comes down to the more you give to the community, the more the community gives back to you. I always think of what would you do right here on this forum. If you've been here awhile and have gotten to know everyone and contributed to the conversation, then when you post a link a site of yours it's going to stay and people will click on on it and visit. On the other hand if your first post drops a link, the posts gets deleted and the poster often gets banned.

I am so sick of auto responses on Twitter that say "Thanks for the follow. Learn how I got 10,000 new followers in just a few days, click here". I don't do that to people anymore

Thank you. I unsubscribe immediately from people who send me the auto direct when I follow them. It's not about how many people are following you anyway. It's about how many people are paying attention to what you say and that takes more than just the number of followers.