The SocialMediaToday.com article “Twitter in a Corner- Facing Huge Challenges” is an interesting piece about Twitter’s goals to monetize and survive an uncertain future. Twitter’s baby steps into advertising and their deliberate roll out strategy are the initial focus. The piece correctly identifies Twitter’s great concern to preserve the user experience, the possible alienation of users due to the new advertising initiatives, and the ongoing need to monetize the business model.

Twitter’s Future: Abandoning the Network?

Author Robert Bacal makes three assertions that essentially outline a scenario that we do not believe to be completely true:

• “With 80% of user accounts abandoned, can Twitter afford to move away from it’s social community roots in order to monetize its operation?”

• “Can it (Twitter) hit the critical balancing point where it can maintain its user base, attract more users while using user eyeballs to generate money? It’s unlikely. There is a point where the commercial use will drive social and community users out of the space, or to competitors, and that reality, or at least possibility limits the revenue potential.“

• “At the same time, there is the issue of commercialization from third party sources who aren’t paying anything for the free advertising they get from simply dumping tweets into the stream. They damage the user experience for those who are not there to buy things, the majority of users, and they don’t drive any revenue at all for Twitter.”

Twitter’s Future: Counterpoint

• Abandonment: according to Bacal “80% of Twitter accounts are abandoned.” This is neither surprising nor alarming news because Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. If we look at the history of blogging’s attrition rates, there is a definite correlation. Simply put, blogosphere has survived and many bloggers have monetized despite attrition (abandonment) rates equal to or more than Twitter’s current rate of account abandonment.
• Commercial use: the claim that commercial use will drive away users is unfounded. In my opinion, commercial use will begin to attract more users not drive them away from Twitter. In tandem with Foursquare, Twitter will be the “offer platform” consumers will flock to in order to find the best deals on products and services.
• Choice: the thought that user experience is damaged by people or companies “dumping tweets into the stream” that either promote or advertise something is no different than the 50 years worth of television or radio advertising we have endured. We as users understand that we can ignore the tweets that promote or advertise because the network’s value outweighs the possible “littered stream.”

More Reasons Why People Will Continue to Adopt

• Research: according to a 2006 quote from Evan Williams: “What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it’s not a social network, but it’s an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.” Twitter remains one of the most vibrant and important resources for information on the internet and the fastest growing search engine with more monthly search queries than Yahoo and Bing- combined!
• Entertainment Value: Twitter has a plethora of celebrities, sports stars, business magnates, and other very interesting people and brands. It is the platform to learn about people and brands. No amount of commercialization will drive people away from the tidbits of gossip, insider information, and breaking news Twitter has to offer.

One of the greatest, untapped, benefits of Twitter is the list building feature. Segmentation and advanced Recency-Frequency-Monetary analysis can only begin when you build lists. Considering that Twitter is quickly becoming a sales and marketing channel the equal of traditional channels like postal-email-phone, it is time for businesses to create lists of their prospective and current consumers that choose Twitter as a channel for communication. Building Twitter lists begin with two steps:

1. Identify Your Customers & Prospects on Twitter

• Email Addresses: extract and build a list of the email addresses of your customers from your database
• Data Append: utilizing your list of customer email addresses, contract a data append service to find the social network (Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn) url addresses of customers who have adopted Twitter and other networks
• Data Search: use Google or Twitter Search to input keywords or names of your customers. Example- Google search “Dean Guadagni on Twitter” or “Dean Guadagni: Twitter.com” to find Dean Guadagni’s Twitter url aka handle
• Prospect Search: input keywords that will identify real time conversations on Twitter relevant to your business. Record the Twitter url of each prospective customer and build a list of these prospects

2.  Build Twitter Lists

• Customer List: build a master list of the customers you currently service who communicate on Twitter. Note- Lock this list for your eyes only so that no competitor can view the list
• Segment: from the master “Customer List” segment your customers into different lists such as location, clients, prospects, most active purchasers, etc.
• Engage: send a tweet to your customer or prospect bundled around an offer to entice them to follow your Twitter account if they are not following

Benefits

• New Touch Points: identifying customers and prospects who use Twitter provides businesses a new place to communicate and deliver offers
• Database Enrichment: adding social media information to  your database increases the value of your database
• Measurement & Analysis: building Twitter lists is the first step in creating a measurement strategy that will allow you to analyze the effectiveness of Twitter as a sales and marketing channel for your business

Facebook and Twitter share  synergy as “must have” business tools for today’s marketing and sales efforts. Facebook is often used as a CRM for businesses and Twitter a prospecting funnel to move people to a Facebook page. With this in mind, how do you cross market and provide exposure for a company Facebook page using Twitter? Answer: hashtag events.

Hashtag Events On Twitter

#FollowFriday and niche hashtag events have provided participants with exposure, viral marketing power, new followers, and recognition. The next step in hashtags should be the creation of an event called #FacebookFri. Inner Architect has announced #FacebookFri with the intention of creating a new event with the same viral power of #FollowFri.

How Does #FacebookFri Work?

#FacebookFri provides Twitter users an opportunity to recommend their favorite Facebook business pages to their Twitter following and other Twitter users:

• Friday: although competing with #FF, the idea is to feed off of #FF traffic much the same way TV networks use strong shows to provide “lead in” audience to their new shows
• Hashtag: each tweet must include the hashtag #FacebookFri to join the event
• Link: capture the url address of the Facebook page you wish to recommend and include it in your tweet

What Are The Benefits of #FacebookFri?

• Exposure: by naming your favorite Facebook pages you are providing exposure for that page
• Friendsourcing: friendsourcing, known by many other names, works like this: by naming your favorite Facebook pages you are providing your stamp of approval. Friends have a greater tendency to adopt other friend’s recommendations
• Viral Marketing: when you recommend a Facebook page you are moving the link for that page into the Twitter stream of your followers and possible new followers
• Networking: #FacebookFri would help other Facebook page owners meet their peers, connect, network, and form possible alliances
• Lead Generation: #FacebookFri would be a prime activity to generate more traffic to your Facebook page enhancing the possibility of new leads for a business owner

Having been speaking about social media topics for almost two years, I’ve seen the tide change from early adopter to businesses now understanding that they must be in the space. Even so, I still meet much cynicism that questions whether social media can really produce sales.

What most companies tend to lose sight of is that your current customers and your former customers are the people most likely to buy from you.  This means that if you are looking at Facebook and Twitter to be a next evolution sales channel, you need to be sure that you are reaching your customers on these networks.

How to reach your customers on Facebook and Twitter:

• Have a solid strategy for inspiring them to connect with you. After all, if they’re not seeing or opening your emails, Facebook and Twitter provide you with another opportunity to get your message in front of them.

1. • Provide incentives for your customer to become a fan or follower. Make you sure answer the question— what’s in it for them?
   • Place your requests to connect  where your customers will see them. Don’t expect a casual mention at the bottom of an email to do the trick.
   • Ask for the connection at every touch point. Don’t rely on just one channel to do all the work.

• Leverage the third party resources that are now available to enhance your database. Take active steps to identify which of your customers are on Facebook and Twitter and understand who is connected to you and who is not. Create a strategy to fill in any gaps in these very important connections.

Multilevel Marketers, affiliate marketers, spamming business owners, scam artists, hard sell sales people, and a myriad of other “dark forces” are lurking on Twitter with the idea of selling you something no matter how you feel about being sold.

In order to avoid, and avoiding this at all costs strikes to the very heart of your credibility, the perception of being one of these “dark forces” avoid the following mistakes when establishing your Twitter presence.

5 Tips To Avoiding Being Perceived As A Spammer On Twitter

• Follow to Follower Ratio: Do not begin your account on Twitter by following hundreds of people-companies or you will be perceived as a MLM, affiliate marketing spammer. This condition is called “Being upside down”
• Follow Recipricols: Begin by following companies or people who almost automatically will follow you in return. Ex- GuyKawasaki usually follows everyone, Pat Kitano, or me deansguide
• Build Slowly: Monitor your “ratios” for the first 100- try to keep it at a 1-1 ratio of followers to those you follow
• Sales Messaging: Do not simply run tweets filled with sales pitches for you or your services. This is the fastest way to lose an audience
• Messaging Content: Just like on a blog, concentrate on tweeting about your region, city, town, community, neighborhood, politics, schools, events, restaurants, construction and any hyper local news that will make you the go-to source for your area