How to Use MicroBlogging to Grow Your Business
If you’re a small business owner, microblogging can be one of the best marketing tools at your disposal. It can leapfrog you right over the competition, and fill your pipleline with qualified leads on a consistent basis. And, it’s free.
What is MicroBlogging?
Twitter is an excellent example of microblogging. It’s a microblogging tool that keeps you in constant contact with potential customers – and it’s relatively easy to do – even for the busiest small business owner. Trust me, I know!
Why MicroBlogging is the Perfect Marketing Tool for Small Business Owners
Most small business owners are extremely busy. For this reason, it’s hard for them to stay abreast of emerging technologies – even when those technologies can increase their sales.
A microblogging medium like Twitter though makes this a non-concern. You only get 140 characters to say what you want, so you can fire off a few of these every day. This is why Twitter has become so popular, in my opinion.
Traditional blogging can be time-consuming. But Twitter is like speed dating – just the basics (the facts) please.
How to Rake in the Cash with Microblogging
Following is one surefire way to use microblogging to rake in the cash.
Special report: In October, I wrote an industry report on freelance writing (a freelance writing jobs report). I distributed it freely and it went viral – mainly because a big-name blogger “Tweeted” about it.
There are three advantages to writing and marketing special reports like this via microblogging:
(i) Special reports builds your credibility: Credibililty is like money in the bank. If you’re considered an authority on a subject, when prospects need the type of product/service you specialize in, you won’t have to “convince them” to buy from you. They will almost do so almost automatically when they’re ready to purchase.
(ii) Special reports stay around a long time: If you write an “industry” report, it will likely be distributed for months – or even years – to come. And with the instantaneous nature of microblogging, this means as new prospects discover it, they will be more likely to pass it along to their friends, who will pass it along to their friends, etc.
This gives it an evergreen life.
(ii) It’s quick and easy to get the word out about your special reports via microblogging: With microblogging, nobody expects a long analysis of why you should read a special report. A simple link along with a one liner about what the report is about and you’re good to go.
Again, it’s a time factor thing.
For example, I spent 12 hours pulling together the special report on freelance writing jobs. The last thing I wanted to do was “promote” it after that. With one simple Tweet from a big-name blogger, the report got picked up by several major sites and the traffic to my blog and website increased substantially over a four-day period.
And, this is the power of microblogging.
Written by Yuwanda Black from Inkwell EditorialPosted on December 1st, 2008 and filed under Blogging
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9 Responses to “How to Use MicroBlogging to Grow Your Business”
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I have a love / hate relationship with Twitter, it has a purpose, but it still isn’t 100% defined what that purpose is. Top bloggers like Guy Kawasaki treat it as 1 part promotion tool and 1 part instant message client. I stopped following him because 100 out of the 150 tweets he did were @replies to people and didn’t make sense to me because I wasn’t in that conversation. I also think he abuses the promotional aspect of Twitter by promoting relentlessly on it. Same thing goes for other big name bloggers who I used to follow but don’t, like John Chow.
Twitter should have a personal touch first, business aspect 2nd imho. I use feedsmith to tweet my blog postings for me so I don’t have to worry about manually tweeting that which I just spent time writing.
There is a purpose for Twitter, it’s just not 100% clear yet, in my eyes, what it’s for.
Your example of your article going viral could have happened from just about any social networking or bookmarket scenario though. Had you emailed a few people in your industry with similar blogs to let them know of the article you just published, the same results could have been gained and you’d be doing it with a much personal touch, it’s worked very well for me. If a big-name digger dugg your article, it could have ended up on the front page of digg as a result. If it got Stumbled at the right time of day by the right person, same results.
The other interesting thing I saw in your article is The last thing I wanted to do was “promote” it after that. I don’t write articles to get social media attention, I write articles that my reader base will read. If it goes through the social media networks after that, even better, but I never write with the intention of promoting. Quality articles get read because they are quality.
I haven’t had much time to get on Twitter lately, but every time I do, I see a surge in followers and in traffic to my site, which tells me that it really does help. Plus, it’s fun!
@Melissa you’re right, Twittering is fun . . . and I can see how it can get to be addictive! I’ll have to watch out for this.
@Mike while I agree with most of what you said, I respectfully disagree with the last point, ie, “Quality articles get read because they are quality.”
With so much information on the web, it is hard to get noticed. And, no matter how good your stuff is, it’s NOT going to get read unless you promote it somehow. While some of it will get found “eventually”, if you make your living in some form as a writer (eg, selling ebooks), you have to promote to reap the rewards.
And, what you promote is the QUALITY content that professionals always strive to churn out. Readers don’t buy from those who push crap, so your stuff had better be good — and you’d better get darn good at promoting it — to make a living online.
On another point, as a newbie to Twitter I can see what you mean by using Twitter “strictly” for promotional means. There has to be some type of balance there to keep subscribers interested.
And FYI, the first thing I did when I completed the report was submit it — along with a blog post — to Brian over at CopyBlogger.com. He not only published the post, but Twittered about it as well. That got the ball rolling!
Thanks for weighing in.
Definitely agree, Yuwanda! As a company initiative, we Twitter, have a microblog (http://izeaoverheard.com), and our Founder & CEO is very active on Twitter and has his own blog. Collectively, these are all big traffic-drivers for us, and help our social media marketing company have an all-around cohesive brand.
They’re also just great ways to communicate and engage with our Community.
Maybe you are missing my point about quality content. If you wrote this article 2 years ago, the word Twitter would be replaced with RSS Subscriber because a year ago, that’s what every blog about blogging focused on, gaining and building RSS subscribers. Twitter is the hot new thing that everyone is jumping on. Likewise, you could replace Twitter with Digg, StumbleUpon, or any of the other hot social media / networking / bookmarking tools out there. Don’t forget about IM, sending the link that way to friends, co-workers and people in the industry.
I agree stuff needs to get promoted, but like I also said, I think its smarter to use a service like feedsmith that will harvest and tweet your WP articles for you rather than actively going and manually typing stuff into Twitter or a Twitter app. One of the most successful article’s I’ve ever written got 90% of the volume of traffic led to it by a 15 second email to Lifehacker saying, “Hey, just wrote this, thought the Lifehacker readers might like it…” and 4 hours later it was published. Having contacts helps, but as much as I enjoy the small splurge of traffic when feedsmith grabs and tweets my blogs contents, I would much rather have a group of loyal readers coming back day in and day out from an RSS feed than a small surge. Likewise, an article I wrote 51 weeks ago (winter specific) that was fairly popular on SU saw a huge spike in traffic again this weekend, all from SU users, new and all over again.
Your concept is solid, but could be applied to whatever “hot” and new web 2.0 app is in with the cool kids right now.
@Mike we’re saying the same thing. Of course, all of these social networking tools have their value. I just used Twitter to illustrate this point b/c it is a microblogging tool (which this article discusses) and happens to be the way the report started to get notoriety because of Brian from CopyBlogger’s tweet.
I’ve been an online marketer since 2002, and three methods I use very effectively are article marketing, blogging and publishing a newsletter, which has a circulation of close to 18,000. The point of this piece was not to discuss which method of social media marketing is better, but to point out how effective microblogging can be.
Nothing more, nothing less.
A lot of it seems to be based on “big time bloggers” tweeting for you…..what happens to those of us that aren’t already known by the big timers?