Twitter Power 2.0

Twitter Power 2.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, Joel Comm, John Wiley and Sons, 2010

A person might wonder how Twitter, with its 140-character limit, can be of any use in present-day marketing. This book gives the answer.

After you sign up, the first thing you should do is to set up your profile page, including a recent photo of yourself. This is where you put the link to your product, company, website, etc., not in each tweet. Put some effort into your page. A profile page that looks like it was thrown together in ten minutes will not do any good. If you are not the creative type, get some help.

Now that your profile page is done, the biggest thing to remember in tweeting is to type things that people will want to read. Few people will waste their time with the written equivalent of someone who is running off at the mouth. Pick a few people in your field to follow, whether they are entrepreneurs, politicians or sports stars. If a person asks a question that you can answer, do it. If a person says something about which you can intelligently comment, do it. Not only have you Paid It Forward, you may just get noticed by the other followers, along with the person you are following. If you are not feeling very profound, repeating quotes from famous people always works. Soon, you will start getting followers of your own.

It's a very good idea to set up a system on Twitter where you are alerted at any mention of your user name or product name. Just one unsatisfied customer can quickly turn into a lot of negative publicity that is hard to counteract. Make an effort to directly contact that person, and work with them to fix the problem. You may just turn an unsatisfied customer into an evangelist for your company.

It is very tempting to follow as many people as possible, assuming that some of them will automatically follow you (Instant Followers!). It is also a very bad idea. For instance, say that you are following 3,000 people, and you have 28 followers. To those who run Twitter, such a large difference between Following and Followers says that you are a spammer. They don't like that, and they will close your account.

This is a gem of a book, and I really enjoyed reading it. Whether you are a novice or veteran marketer, you will learn something from this book.