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Creative Ways to Leverage Twitter
The popularity of Twitter as a social media channel has made many marketers look to the site as a potential tool for gathering information from potential customers and delivering information to them as well. Unfortunately, Twitter is far more effective at delivering information than gathering information. That being said, Twitter can be a great way to inexpensively deliver a steady stream of information to potential customers.
Consider the following strategies for sending messages to your customers and driving traffic to your website.
- Use short "teasers" designed to pique interest and get people to click on a link that will deliver more information. With each of items you would include a link to your site, your blog, etc.
- Keep your eyes open for interesting news stories that you may be able to relate to your own business. You can then include a link to those stories on your Twitter feed. These are the types of items that are often "retweeted."
- Be free and specific with your praise for other "tweeters"-share their tweets and, most importantly, what you liked about the tweets with your followers. Those you praised are likely to reciprocate.
- Just as it is useful to benchmark businesses in your industry to learn about best practices, it can also be helpful to follow some popular tweeters and observe the topics they tweet about and the style of their posts in order to make your own posts more appealing.
One of our clients was recently covered by a business blogger who had what we thought was a clever approach: she gathered 100 inputs from female entrepreneurs (our client's #97) about their experiences, included them in a blog and then asked each to "tweet" about it. Good way to deliver relevant content and drive traffic to her blog and Twitter feed.
What creative things have you done to increase followers, retweets and traffic to your web site? | |
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3 Key Points About Core Competencies
While many businesses fall into the trap of rushing into an exciting new market because they see a potential for growth and profits in that market, it's usually not enough that the market is attractive. The business must also be capable of achieving success in this market.
Important lesson: "To be successful, a business should not stray too far from its core competencies."
A core competency is something your business does better than your competitors-something that gives you a competitive advantage!
The three characteristics that define a core competency are:
- The competency adds significant value, or the perception of value, to customers. It's not enough to simply be good at something or to have some advantage. Your skill must be valued by customers. For example, a prominent brand name is valued by customers even though it might not add any tangible value to the product being purchased.
- The competency is broadly applicable to a number of business opportunities and markets. For example, an automobile parts manufacturing company that is skilled at filling a customer's order more quickly than competitors can likely apply that skill to other types of manufacturing in other markets.
- The competency is not easily imitated by competitors. If a competency is easily recreated by competitors, it is not a true core competency, because a business relying on an easily imitatible skill will quickly find itself bombarded by competitors and out of business.
A business should think carefully about its core competencies and, once they are developed, should always keep them in mind when considering a new business opportunity. Interested in learning more, request our most recent white paper on Turning Core Competencies Into Competitive Advantage. | |
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When They Say Too Much
A common problem of strategic planning sessions is often the balance of inputs from the meeting participants. There are almost always team members who say virtually nothing and other members who dominate the conversation. The result, of course, is a very biased discussion and outcome.
Here are some tips for helping to deal with the more boisterous and domineering members of your strategic planning sessions:
- At your very first meeting, develop some "ground rules" for how meetings will be run. These rules should include provisions for engaging quieter members and reminding more talkative members of their duty to share the soap box with the rest of the team. Get consensus on these rules, put them in writing and refer to them when needed.
- For certain discussions, you can balance out the input of group members by asking them to write down 2 - 3 ideas and then go around the room, giving each member a fixed time limit to discuss their thoughts. Feel free to cut members off if they go over their time limit.
- If a team member seems focused on one specific thought and continues to bring it up in such a way as to reinforce or continue to assert the idea, use a whiteboard to write that idea down to demonstrate that the idea has been heard and needs no more discussion at the moment.
Looking for more information on how to manage your strategic planning sessions. Learn more here. | |
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Turning Core Competencies Into Competitive Advantage
Almost all companies have at least one core competency that sets them apart from their competitors. Companies that can identify and maintain their core competencies, and maintain the discipline needed to stick close to those competencies, will have a far greater chance of success than competitors that are unable to do the same.Contact us for a free copy.
Strategy Matters! linda@stratcommunications.com | | Offer Expires: 5/1/11 |
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