Page 362 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Twitter

Twitter (www.twitter.com), a popular social networking platform, is the journal-
ing of your activities or thoughts in 280-character-or-fewer messages. Twitter
has more than 321 million users as of 2019.

As you know, Twitter isn’t just for consumers. Companies use it to share their
community information. You can create a Twitter account for free and start
tweeting (the term used for posting to the service). You can then invite people to
follow you so that they can receive updates via email, on the web, on the mobile
web, and via SMS.

Other social media communities

Countless other social media communities are out there — some general, some
targeted niche segments (LinkedIn/Slideshare), and the numerous social media
utilities (YouTube, Instagram, Scribd, and others). These all have mobile capabilities,
and you can extend others to support your mobile programs. You’ll need to do some
research to find out who is supporting what and determine how you can best
leverage mobile-based marketing in relation to what your competitors are doing (or
not doing). You can put your own spin on what they are doing or you can experiment
with different tactics. For example, if they send an email on Tuesday each week, you
can make sure to send something on Mondays and Wednesdays to get audience
attention. If they send an email, you can try a newsletter with discounts.

If you decide to build your own social media program through the mobile web, use
your competitive research to ensure that you’re creating something unique and
then make sure that the concept is true to your brand.

Creating your own social offerings:
applications and widgets galore

You may also want to offer value to members of your audience by creating your
own social media offerings or something altogether unique. Even now, you still
have plenty of opportunities to create something that hasn’t been done before.

You can deploy these services over and through any of the mobile paths, such as
SMS, mobile Internet, and downloadable applications. For example, with SMS,
you can recruit opinions and comments, blogs, and more. The key is to consider
the content format and the most appropriate path for delivering the content to
mobile subscribers. One such service is apps.

346 PART 5 Old Marketing Is New Again with SMM