Strands Blog

You hear the buzzwords every day in the office, on the street and in the latest hip hop and country songs: Blog This, Social Media That, Retweet It and Follow Me. What does it all mean and is Twitter applicable to your growing E-Commerce business?

The short answer is YES.

Why Twitter?

1.) Provides transparency inside your company:
When people buy from you online or in your store, they believe in the story you are trying to telling them, that is why they are buying from you in the first place. Most likely they will never see who is running your company, the employee’s that make the magic happen, how your product was made and so on. Customers want to know that there are real human beings behind the curtain, not robots. Twitter is a perfect mechanism to open a dialog with your customer base and show them your true personality.

2.) A feedback mechanism for your customers:
A customer’s worst nightmare is to dial the dreaded 1-800 number and speak with someone who has no connection to the product, company or their native language.Twitter provides a perfect mechanism for your customers to submit feedback and for you to solicit feedback on products, customer service

3.) An open forum for customer conversations:
Whether your business is big or small it’s hard to stay on top of customer chatter about your products. Not only is Twitter great to solicit feedback from your customer’s, it’s also a great tool to listen to what your customers are saying about your product. Listen in on the conversation and you might find a new product, feature or customer you may have missed.

4.) A new targeted marketing channel:
Twitter is a perfect place to build a new community of followers that you can direct special offers to. When you build your following, reward them with special offers only for Twitterers. The beauty of Twitter is that your followers can forward specials to their friends growing your customer base.

5.) Improves your Google searches:
Twitter is now crawl able by Google. If someone talks about your company or products on Twitter, when your customer’s do a Google search, tweets will now come up in the search results.

How to get followers:

1.) Email newsletter: Easily add a “Follow Us On Twitter” link in your emails. Another good way to get a higher click through rate is to add “For Special Offers”, or if you want to take it further give away a gift card to the 500th follower, etc.

2.) Your website: Adding a banner to your home page, or even a form for a customer’s Twitter name during sign up/registration is a great way to acquire information.

3.)Other social media: Add a Twitter link on your Facebook, Blog or Youtube page.

Tweeting Tips:

1.) The more the merrier: If you do decide to tweet, which I highly recommend you do, make sure you tweet often. Twitter is just like a blog, if you only tweet once a month, customers will loose interest. Tweeting something valuable daily is suggested.

2.) Add value: Make your tweets valuable. While it’s cool to know Shaq is taking a shower, your customers want to hear things that are meaningful and either pull them closer to your brand or start a dialog with them.

3.) Pics & videos: Link to pictures and videos. Twitpic and twitvid are great tools that allow you to link to pictures and videos from your Twitter account. Both video and images provide an even higher level of transparency with your customers.

4.) Multiple accounts: As your company grows, you may want to create multiple Twitter accounts, e.g. one for your customer service, another for possibly the CEO, CMO, etc. If each person has an interesting story to tell and generally they are inaccessible to the general public, a Twitter profile will help increase the transparency into your company. Tony Hsieh’s the CEO of Zappos, most people will never meet him in real life, but he always responds to his tweets.

A Few Noteworthy Twitter Pages:

Metroparkusa: www.twitter.com/metroparkusa
Heels: www.twitter.com/highheels
CycleGear: www.twitter.com/CycleGearsales

A Few Noteworthy Twitterers:

Express: http://twitter.com/ExpressLisaG
BestBuy: http://twitter.com/BestBuyCMO
Zappos: http://twitter.com/Zappos

Embrace social media and let it work for you. Feel free to comment below and add in your feedback on how successful Twitter has been for your E-Commerce site. Tweet at us @strandsrecs on Twitter too. Stay tuned for more tips to help your small business grow in 2010.