Page 168 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Next, identify, follow, and establish relationships with influential tweeters who
have large followings. These people are similar to influential bloggers. They’re the
experts in a specific domain, with large audiences who can encourage people to
follow you and who can influence others. In some cases, they may not be experts
but rather celebrities of one kind or another. Friend Follower (https://
friendorfollow.com/twitter/most-followers/) has a list of the most popular
people on Twitter by follower count. Not surprisingly, many of them are celebri-
ties, starting with President Barack Obama and Katy Perry. Next on the list are
Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Cristiana Ronaldo, and Lady Gaga.
Different applications can help you identify these users, but one we like is Twiends
(https://twiends.com/), which helps you browse Twitter users by category and
country. It also gives you tips on how to grow your own follower base. You may
want to also try the Who to Follow area in the lower-right hand corner of the
desktop version of your Twitter timeline. It recommends people for you to follow
based on your interests and who else you follow. When deciding whom to follow,
think about it like a cocktail party. First, start with the people you know and the
people that they know, and then people talking about subjects important to you,
and finally random (or influential!) people and those who approach you.

Marketing via Twitter

Twitter can be used in any number of ways to market. But you can leverage the
Twitter platform in a few critical ways to reach your customers. We list those ways
here in order of priority:

» Listening: There’s no doubt that Twitter is a powerful listening platform for
you to learn how your customers think about your products, your company,
and the category that your products fit into. Don’t miss that opportunity to
listen to your customers talk about you in real time. Comcast changed the way
customers thought about it by listening seriously to customer concerns
expressed via Twitter and by responding through the platform itself. As you
listen on Twitter, be sure to also listen to conversations about your product
category and industry versus just your own product.
» Promoting product launches and events: The real-time news element of
Twitter has been fundamental in catapulting the platform into the main-
stream. There are few faster ways for news to spread more quickly than via
Twitter. In a similar fashion, marketers can use Twitter effectively to announce
products and market events capitalizing on the newsworthiness of the
announcements. In fact, marketing efforts can be announced this way. For
example, Pepsi asked Snoop Dogg to announce its Pepsi Max commercial via
his Twitter account to his followers first. It helped that he was in the ad itself.

152 PART 3 Reaching Your Audience via Mainstream Social Platforms