Completely new to e-marketing - Twitter

Sassypants

Hi all, have recently become manager of an independent optical practice and marketing is on my to-do list.

Our client base is quite old so we are trying to appeal to the younger generations. Have just set up a Twitter account and we are trying to keep that fresh and funny (without being too corny if that's possible).

Have you guys any tips on how to make Twitter more effective?

We are working on our website and on Facebook (bit backwards, I know!)

Would appreciate any help/info. Am completely new to this and wouldn't be the most techie either.

TIA

kgarvey

I personally thing you would be better off concentrating on Facebook first. And building a fanbase there. There is alot of ways you can start getting fans.

The best one would be to use facebook ads. You can get a $50 voucher on fiverr for $5, this would get you clicks for pennies.

There is a few tricks on how to target people but if you know who your competitors are and if they have facebook pages there is ways to market directly to there fans

dxter

kgarvey wrote: »

I personally thing you would be better off concentrating on Facebook first. And building a fanbase there. There is alot of ways you can start getting fans.

The best one would be to use facebook ads. You can get a $50 voucher on fiverr for $5, this would get you clicks for pennies.

There is a few tricks on how to target people but if you know who your competitors are and if they have facebook pages there is ways to market directly to there fans

I wonder if there are people with success stories using facebook ads. I have tried it by it was complete failure, so I am not sure if this is money well spent.

kgarvey

There is alot of people out there with success storys and making a fortune with facebook ads. If you get your target market right you can make a killing.

vincychan

Sassypants wrote: »

Hi all, have recently become manager of an independent optical practice and marketing is on my to-do list.

Our client base is quite old so we are trying to appeal to the younger generations. Have just set up a Twitter account and we are trying to keep that fresh and funny (without being too corny if that's possible).

Have you guys any tips on how to make Twitter more effective?

We are working on our website and on Facebook (bit backwards, I know!)

Would appreciate any help/info. Am completely new to this and wouldn't be the most techie either.

TIA

Let me give you a small advice, I am sure FB can spread your brand name, but it will do you no good.

People go search on search engines for information and needs, so why not concentrate on your website and if you already have a website, try marketing it with some paid campaigns, like Google Adwords PPC campaigns.

I would bet on it, its the best way to start with by just spending some money, at the same time, try building good relationships on top discussion boards and blogs.

This would do the magic for you...

PaulPinnacle

kgarvey wrote: »

I personally thing you would be better off concentrating on Facebook first. And building a fanbase there.

I've seen this type of comment pop up a bit recently. It always baffles me. Twitter and Facebook are different platforms with different demographics, very different usage and therefore require (or should require) very different social marketing strategies. In absence of any other information I can't possibly see how anyone could suggest that one platform should be prioritised ahead of the other.

Yes, Facebook has a larger user base (both in global terms and in Irish terms), but that's only a tiny part of the overall picture. Twitter is all about conversation and engagement. Through those conversations you can earn the trust and loyalty of a (potential) customer, a targeted one that falls into the relatively small % of users who actively comment/engage (so huge social engagement benefits across multiple platforms [using Twitter to promote Facebook content they later become a FB fan too, similar for YouTube/Pintrest/Blog/SocialPlatformOfTheDay] along with potential SEO benefits as these are the type of users that tend to actually link), giving you the perfect chance to gain permission based marketing while actively championing your brand.

kgarvey wrote: »

There is alot of people out there with success storys and making a fortune with facebook ads. If you get your target market right you can make a killing.

Volume wise there would be far far more making a much larger profit from search engine advertising. I'd suggest that as a % of all advertisers, the %'s would be far better for SEA too. There are a lot of 'stories' around of the successes achieved with social advertising, very few case studies to back them up however. Yes, they can achieve a good CPA (cost per acquisition) in campaigns, but just be sure not to assume it's any type of silver bullet and ensure it forms a single strand of a long term, sustainable and well rounded digital marketing strategy.

vincychan wrote: »

Let me give you a small advice, I am sure FB can spread your brand name, but it will do you no good.

That's a heck of a generalisation to make.

I'd agree that any brand or business shouldn't just sign up to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. just as everyone else is and they feel they 'need' to be there too. They should have clear goals, strategies to achieve those goals and the knowledge to implement those strategies. If they do the work in planning out their social strategy and execute it well, there is no reason at all to say that any platform, be it Facebook or otherwise, will "do you no good".

vincychan wrote: »

People go search on search engines for information and needs, so why not concentrate on your website and if you already have a website, try marketing it with some paid campaigns, like Google Adwords PPC campaigns.

Part of any decent digital marketing strategy is to ensure that visitors are obtained from a variety of inbound sources and that not all the eggs are put into a single basket. It doesn't matter whether that basket is organic results, where a single change to the algo can tank a site or kick it out of the index (yes, this does and can happen to legit sites), or paid advertising, where removing that channel completely removes all visitors to the site.

Once the website is finished and launched, obviously this will be the main focus of much of the brands digital activities. However, in the mean time it's certainly not a mistake to invest the time into your social accounts and even when the site itself is up and running investing time into social platforms can be very rewarding (even in terms of SEO the social signals are only going to become more prominent and continue to evolve with stronger weightings in rankings going forward, so in terms of 'focusing on your website' you could do a lot worse than investing time into social accounts and building those important relationships and gaining that positive customer engagement).

Sassypants wrote: »

Our client base is quite old so we are trying to appeal to the younger generations. Have just set up a Twitter account and we are trying to keep that fresh and funny (without being too corny if that's possible).

Have you guys any tips on how to make Twitter more effective?

You're off to a good start in terms of having identified a current weak point (you know you're looking to target a younger client base - social platforms being an ideal way), but don't stop yet. You've said you want to appeal to the 'younger generations', but that's far too vague for your needs.

Yes. You'd be happy picking up a new customer from 10 to 25 and consider them 'younger', but you can't craft campaigns around a range that large. Look at the demographic information of your target location. Is it mostly male or female? What is the spread of ages like? Is there a competitor that has a clear niche in the market already sewn up (doesn't mean you couldn't go after them, just increases the difficulty of that specific niche)?

Once you get some detailed information and start to analyse it, things will start to become a lot clearer. Where you go from there is a personal choice, no right or wrong, but if you google "persona building" you'd get some good information on how to take that demographic information and how to build campaigns around it with pinpoint targeting that can be a little more intuitive. It would change the internal conversation from "We're trying to target young males" to more of a "We're going to target 'Jack'. Jack is 24. He likes GAA, prefers Heineken to Carlsberg and thinks Facebook is far too mainstream so uses Twitter and Pinterest instead. Yes, he's obviously a hipster."... or something of that nature which has information that is actually relevant to persona's you're going to target.

Once you've created a couple of persona's that make up your targets (yes, your target is much broader than this, but these are the ones where you think you can gain the most traction and get the best results), you start to get a much clearer picture on how to reach those people.

If (as a random example) you were based in Castlebar (my home town) and targeting young males for optician services, you'd obviously have been interacting with Mayo GAA related accounts about offering a free eye exam to the referee from the game on Sunday. The tone of the comments would depend on the specific demographic you were targeting, but they could range from very safe and inoffensive to really skirting the edge of acceptability and hoping for it to go viral as a result. There's no right or wrong there, it's all judgement calls and will really come down to what you've established as the 'voice' and the image you want for the brand. Doing this, you're sending out 'funny' content for your own followers (something that they'd more than likely retweet) to enjoy, while also gaining the potential of interacting with an account that would be considered a 'influencer' or 'hub' or 'thought leader' (or whatever the current social media buzzword is) among your specific target market.

Trojan

^^ awesome post. Let me disagree with one minor point:

I'd agree that any brand or business shouldn't just sign up to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. just as everyone else is and they feel they 'need' to be there too.

You should sign up to everything immediately and grab your company branding while it's available. You can always put up a single post/tweet/etc pointing them to where you are actually active, but it's a real pain when you go looking for your name and the account is in use by someone else.