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Is Twitter Advertising, Marketing or Just Annoying?

Guest post by: Marshall W. Northcott

Article Overview: If you are a business and/or sales professional and you are wondering how Twitter might apply in your industry and how to generate leads and sales using the service this is a must read for you!

Is Twitter Advertising, Marketing or Just Annoying?

If people don't use Twitter correctly, it's neither, advertising or marketing, it's just annoying!

Twitter allows the sender to broadcast instant messages to whomever chooses to be a follower. The key is that no one has to follow anyone else; it is a choice that people can freely make.

If a young star eyed fan is following a famous person they are likely interested in what they are up to during their day. That famous person actually has the ability to influence followers by mentioning products and services through either subtle name dropping or blatant commercialism by including links in their updates.

People who are interested in current events, news flashes, traffic reports, weather forecasts or sports commentary can remain current on a continuous basis by following the appropriate sources of information.

In the business world, I believe that the application is different. Yes, an individual may follow someone because they are interested in what they are up to however, it will likely be for a different reason. In addition and even more importantly for business applications the person being followed must offer some form of value! They can get away with the odd promotional message as long as it is sandwiched between some value added content. Otherwise the Twitter messages become nothing more than another annoying form of advertising. Who wants or would be willing to subject themselves to that!

I was following one gentleman and he was blasting out two messages back to back almost hourly. The first was a quote and most of them were quite good. The second was his advertising. After about two weeks the quotes started to repeat, all he was doing was recycling the same information. His messages lost their value and I am no longer following him.

I do my best with my own Twitter messages to send about 80% (or more) valued added content and balance the rest out with a message on an upcoming program or a new blog entry. My messages include a quick thought, an observation, a humourous point, a relevant quote from someone famous or a link to some value added content other than my own.

My belief is that the key to getting, keeping and building followers for business purposes is to send out information that isn't self serving only! Don't just blast people with your own "look at me, look at me propaganda" or "buy my stuff" messages. They turned you on and they have a choice to turn you off with a click of the mouse if they don't feel positive about making themselves that accessible. If you maintain integrity in your Twitter messages your followers will forward them to others to help you further build the numbers. The idea is to "go viral" and use this new form of media to gain exposure to people it would otherwise be impossible to reach through traditional forms of advertising and/or communication. Position yourself as an expert, a "go to" guy or girl and then you will win big with Twitter!

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Article Tags: How to Leverage Twitter, Sales Marketing, Twitter, Twitter Marketing



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