Email and Social Marketing Tips | Pinpointe Blog

At Pinpointe, we just started using Twitter – our page isn’t too impressive yet, but you can find us at www.twitter.com/Pinpointe. 

Twitter is among the fastest growing social networks. Nearly 4 million times a day, the 140-character limit “tweet” attracts some percentage of Twitter’s 200,000+ weekly users. According to TechCrunch, Twitter has 1 million total users. And Popacular.com runs a GigaTweet counter, claiming over a billion tweets and counting since Twitter launched in 2006.

The marketing opportunities on Twitter are obvious.  For example, when we post a useful tip in the Pinpointe blog, schedule a new educational webinar or post an on-demand Email Marketing best-practices video, we take 60 seconds to also post a “tweet” about it, and even though we just started, we’re starting to see visits to our website from Twitter.  It’s simple to share headlines and updates about products and services to our growing list of devotees who want to be plugged into up-to-the-moment tweets through pretty much whatever Web or mobile technology suits them. And Tweets can have a compound effect – creating a kind of “ambient awareness.” For me, it’s the same feeling as when I move from email to instant messaging: instant response vs. emails’ delayed response.

Social media keeps blurring and redefining communication lines, and Twitter is a perfect example.  It’s free, simple, informative, useful and for many, an extraordinary way to never unplug. And as you’ll soon find, it’s addictive.  Twitter gives us marketers yet another channel to communicate with our prospective audience.Twitter might not stay free for marketers for long. Mr. Williams replied to Fast Company’s question earlier this year: “When and how will Twitter start making money?”

Even if you’re not [yet] into “micro-blogging”, sharing updates from your blog, PR department, product team or services offers an additional, free option for loyal fans and customers to receive information and stay in touch. For “micro-blogging blog posts”, there’s an acceptable Twitter community format: simply the title of the blog post followed by a link to the full blog post. To ensure we stay inside the 140-character limit, we use tinyurl.com to convert long URL paths to aptly named tiny ones. You can also use TweetBurner to shorten the URL and cut & paste it into your tweet.Already there are dozens of Twitter ‘mashups’ — that is, Twitter mashed together with other applications. Some of these make strides toward superior usability for marketers and other professionals on Twitter.

Here are a few Twitter mashups that you might find useful:

·         TwitBlogs for macro blogging

·         TwitPic for photo sharing over Twitter

·         SplitTweet if you have multiple Twitter accounts in your company

·         TweetDeck for managing and following tweets to manage your tweets in bite sized chunks

·         TweetStats to track your analytics and stats

·         Mail2Twitter to Tweet from any email enabled mobile device

·         TwitterCounter is a widget you can add to your macro blog to show how followers you have

·         TwitBin is a Firefox plugin for Twitter. This one allows you to send and receive tweets.

·         TwitterCal lets you connect your Twitter account to your Google Calendar

Think of Twitter as another marketing channel — so if you blog regularly or offer RSS feeds, or if your active in social networks like FaceBook, there’s no reason not to add Twitter as another point of connection. Creating an account may not pave the road to 10,000 followers overnight, but with the cost at zero and the time needed so minuscule, it’s worth a try. You might just discover that tweeting is addictive.

For more news and stats on Twitter, check out this blog: twitterfacts.blogspot.com. For business background, CrunchBase and Hubspot have decent Twitter company profiles.