How Can Affiliates and Online Marketers Use Twitter

It was a lot of fun exploring Twitter the last two weeks and setting up our Affiliate Tweets. In my previous blog I alluded to having a few ideas I had rolling around my head about how affiliates and online marketers could use this platform in their marketing and brand management. Critics have come out to say that Twitter is not much more than a fad, a little too addictive and really just disseminating useless information, but I found an interesting article from the New York Times on April 22nd that lays it out in another way that I tend to agree with:

“Twitter is best understood as a highly flexible messaging system that swiftly routes messages, composed on a variety of devices, to the people who have elected to receive them in the medium the recipients prefer. It is a technology that encourages a new mode of communication”

Communication with customers is paramount to creating a strong brand and increasing revenues. It is especially important in this day and age of social media and consumer generated content. This platform can allow you to communicate with your customers in many different ways and allow them to give some instant feedback to you and each other.

So onto my ideas for how to incorporate this into an affiliate’s site and overall marketing toolbox.

Deal Distribution: Twitter allows users to receive tweets via their cell phone, IM or the web. By using this platform, you can essentially expand your marketing to your customers cell phones and on their desktops! Imagine that you received a new coupon or hot product available at one of your favorite merchants, (warning shameless client plug) MyWinesDirect. You immediately send a tweet to all your site visitors/members/customers that are following your account and it reaches them in their car or while they are shopping at the mall. Can you say poor man’s mobile marketing? Or it pops up in their instant messenger while they are working or surfing the net for a great bottle of wine.

Let’s expand that example. You could set up several different Twitter accounts and offer a variety of tweet categories to your users to follow. Some examples: SiteNews, Coupons, HotProducts, NewMerchants, Children/Family, Philanthropy. You can provide your customers even more choices of what they want to receive and participate in.

Create an Event or Piggyback on one: How about sending tweets from an event or a show that your customers want to hear about. Or better yet, piggyback on a big time national event like the SuperBowl. Here’s an example: “During the SuperBowl we will be featuring deals and specials from sponsors and other merchants mentioned all via Twitter, sign up now.” You could then send tweets on any deals you have with merchants that are featured in the commercials, on the sidelines or during the halftime show. Many Americans watch TV with a laptop nearby, why not use the power of an event like this to build your brand and feature some “ads” at the same time, or just your witty insights.

Philanthropy: One of my favorite sites is ModestNeeds.org. A friend at Coldwater Creek turned me onto them several years ago and I just love the idea. If you don’t know who they are, you have to check them out. The premise is simple, from time to time people have a financial crisis and need some assistance to keep their car, their job, their house, or put food on the table etc. They submit a needs request and then people around the world can donate money to help fill that need. It’s a great concept and one I am proud to say I have contributed to, albeit not as much as I should. By their basic nature they are a social organization. They could very much use Twitter to get out the word on new needs requests and anything special going on or allow users to be notified immediately of specific needs they wish to contribute to. Expand this line of thinking to those affiliates that have a charitable component to their affiliate model. Imagine a Twitterthon to raise money for a given charity? Affiliates could line up deals and specials every half hour for a full day or more and send out tweets. I’m just brainstorming here, but I really like this idea. It’s getting the word out, raising awareness, increasing volume and building community. All great components of any marketing campaign.

TwitterCamp: I love this new app and think it would be cool at conferences and events, especially Affiliate Summit. Shawn, you gotta check it out if you haven’t already. It allows everyone to keep track of where everyone is and what they are doing/thinking about on LCD’s and large displays. Sort of like a “You are here” map at the mall, showing where every participating Twitterer is hanging out.

So there you go, my thoughts, for what they are worth, on this powerful tool.

There are some caveats though. I’m willing to bet if you overuse this, bombard followers with unimportant information and generally misuse it, it won’t be effective. If you aren’t sharing things worth talking about, and this really is a good principal in your business overall, than why would they listen. So be sure to use it only when you have something worth saying to say.

You also probably want to provide some easy to understand and thorough education. I found out with my earlier post that Twitter doesn’t really explain it all that well for those that don’t live in the world we do. I spent a lot of time explaining what it is and how to use it over the last few days.

So let me know what you think. Share your ideas for using Twitter in your business. If you need any help setting this stuff up, want more information or want to bounce some ideas around, just let me know.

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