Twitter For Businesses: A Webinar Review

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THE MAN BEHIND THE WORK

From the Midwest state of Indiana, a businessman has built himself a credible reputation as being an expert in the social media and marketing industry.  This successful young man and CEO of MindFrame, Kyle Lacy, has taken both the practice and education of social media into his own hands and has empowered others to utilize this new era of marketing tools.  Two very notable accomplishments that Lacy is credited for are his published book titled Twitter Marketing for Dummies, which hit the shelves in 2009, along with his 2010 book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself. 

Aside from his professional work in the social media field and numerous awards, Lacy has served as an educator in digital media through his participation in training sessions, seminars, and webinars.  I had the privilege of taking part in his recent webinar hosted by Kuno Creative.  In this seminar, “Building Leads With Twitter,” Kyle Lacy discussed many useful ideas and concepts regarding the use of Twitter in a business setting.

MARKETING IS STORY-TELLING

One of the first points that was articulated in this seminar was that marketing is story telling.  Marketing is not necessarily about the tools a person or business uses to portray a message.  It needs to be seen as an idea, as articulating this idea through the use of story telling.  For this reason, Lacy stressed that in using twitter there needs to be content that is not purely about you.

THE SEPARATION OF TWEETS

In the use of twitter, it is crucial to extend your content beyond those tweets that are purely representative of you and your marketing pitches.  Lacy proposed a 1/3-1/3-1/3 rule laid out as follows:

1. The first third of your tweets are about you and your content.  These can include such tweets as those about your blog posts, an upcoming event you are speaking at, or anything that fulfills your own ideas of what marketing your brand is.
2. The second third of your tweets should be your partners' content.  In this you want to think about the people involved in your business.  Lacy used the example of the printer your organization uses.  Assist in promoting their ideas with the hope that they may eventually return the favor.  You may do this through a retweet, a mention, or any other type of tweet that promotes your partners' business.
3. The final third should reflect industry content.  Search for topics and information that those within your industry would be interested in, and focus on that for this last part of your twitter strategy.

Lacy noted that although these are guidelines you should keep in mind, it isn't imperative that you follow this structure too rigidly.  The higher the frequency of tweets, the less you need be concerned of the exact measurement of thirds.  It is above all important to assess what content of yours your followers seem to find most interesting and make adjustments accordingly.

SOCIAL COMMERCE

The final topic covered in Kyle Lacy's webinar was social commerce.  He proposed the follow ordering of focus in your social media strategy:

Capture>Promote>Join>Purchase>Share

1. Capture: First, you must pull consumers into your business and collect the data.  Think of this as part of recruiting followers and potential customers.
2. Promote: Next you should promote what your business or organization does and provide tools or information to educate these individuals.  This may be done through various ways such as providing free materials, webinars, and endless other options.  Lacy pointed out that a marketer should "think of twitter as a distribution center."
3. Join: Third, work to push these people to join in, either in joining a community, movement, Facebook page, etc.  The example he used was Starbucks' community, allowing users to post opinions, view drinks, and participate through various actions.
4. Purchase: Now comes the time for the purchase.  Use this opportunity to try to gain a customer through a purchase or equivalent action determined a "buy" by your organization.
5. Share: The final step is to share.  You want to extend your relationship beyond the purchasing stage through further active participation.  Give consumers a reason to continue to stay involved.

Reviewing these steps, you should always remember that building leads is a process.  You would never walk up to a stranger and start off a conversation by asking them to purchase something.  It is imperative to build a relationship before throwing a pitch at the potential customer.

CLOSING REMARKS AND QUESTIONS

The seminar ended with questions from the participants in the webinar.  One topic in particular, which was brought up, is important to mention.

A large debate going on between those who believe in social media and those who don't is that of B2B (business to business) marketing in the digital sector.  Lacy's standpoint on this is that B2B and B2C (business to consumer) shouldn't even be separate terms.  His reasoning is that, despite the circumstances that make each type of marketing different, even with B2B you are working with an individual person.  He believes there is only one situation in which a company should not need to participate in social media.  In order to qualify in this category a business must have:

1. No customers using social media
2. No competitors using social media, and
3. No individuals in your industry using social media

FURTHER INFORMATION

Kuno Creative's website.
Get your own free copy of Kuno Creative's Twitter Marketing Cheat Sheet!

Kyle Lacy's Blog.
Follow @KylePLacy on twitter.

A special thank you to Kuno Creative for hosting the webinar, and a great big thanks to Kyle Lacy for the insightful information and so kindly allowing me to write this post about the webinar.