PMTvoice

Twitter is one of those social sites/communication tools that seems to be fairly polarizing in a number of ways. The average twitter user most likely has to defend his/her use of it weekly if not more. For some reason there’s a gap (perhaps widening, perhaps not) of those who know and love twitter and those who disparage its very existence. Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, we here have decided to embrace this medium and use it as best we can. To that end, I have distilled the top 3 uses I have found most helpful/successful.

1. Photo Contests – The idea for contests is not new to us or anybody really, but when we decided to do our first contest recently, it was it some ways blatently obvious that Twitter should be the main channel for promoting it. Still, there was an effort to promote via Facebook, this blog, forums, and other online communities. In the end, I asked the contestants where they heard of the contest, and the overwhelming response was Twitter…Since then, Twitter has been the main and most effective method for promoting our contests.
2. Product/Site Awareness – In my job as the resident social media guy, I found it very helpful to keep up with everything on our sites. If there are new products, any new and/or cool things, it’s good to know. Twitter allows me to show everyone what’s happening over at PrintMyThing or PrintMyRibbon, not yesterday or last month, but TODAY! Think about it, you have a tool that presents a perfect way of showing off your latest and greatest the very minute it goes live on your site. Staying ahead of the competition is such an important thing these days and this ability to act/react so quickly is simply invaluable.
3. Involvement – One of the best uses (also most difficult to quantify) of Twitter is to simply be involved in the online community. As you find more relevant followers, more relevant people will follow you. What this allows for is an ad-hoc community of like minded people. We used to call this “Permission Marketing” where you can only really talk to those who give you permission (by following) your tweets. In many ways this is the best form of marketing and if managed well and consciously it can be an integral piece of your marketing mix.

Seems to me I’m always seeing other people’s lists on using twitter or why twitter rocks or oooh i love twitter and here’s why, so I decided to toss my little contribution into this online mélange. Have anything to add or do you want to learn more or tell me I’m wrong…Comment below…