Here are some interesting twitter statistics according to worldwide comScore who releases figures today.

• 73.5 million unique individuals visited Twitter in January 2010, up 8 percent from December
• Twitter has an amazing growth rate of 1,105 percent!
• 2009 was Twitter’s best year ever!
• It is estimated 1 billion tweets were tweeted in December and 1.2 billion tweets in January! (information provided by Crunchbase)

Keep in mind that comScore configures these number from twitters own site. These numbers do not record usage from mobile phones and other applications like the popular hootsuite and twillow tools.  Numbers from those apps may be twice as large.

With almost 75 million users tweeting over a billion tweets a month, it  makes sense for you to use twitter strategically to grow your business! Read more about strategic tweets and how to make twitter work for you!

Cultural Sponge develops strategic twitter campaigns to help businesses brand, create a buzz and grow.  Contact us today for a free consultation!

From reading our last post, 10 Things To Do Before Launching a Twitter Campaign, you learned a Twitter campaign consists of strategic tweets that produce intended positive results.

Here are 10 twitter campaign ideas. Each campaign should be composed of a series of tweets. Time the tweets to be posted appropriately.

1. Blogging campaign – post a title from your recent blog with a link tracing back to your site. Track your results. If more of your followers are clicking on certain blog topics, blog about that topic more. Driving traffic to your blog will increase you SEO.
2. Word of the day – Post a word of the day. If customers know the word of the day, they get a discount. If you have a storefront, post a sign saying, “Follow us on Twitter, get the word of the day & get discounts!”
3. Hold a fun contest – think of fun ways to have your followers interact with you on twitter and hold a contest. for example, give away a gift card to the most creative answer to a question that you post.
4. Get local followers – tweet about local events and attractions.
5. Niche marketing – tweet about things pertaining to your target market. For example, if your target market is Realtors, tweet about up to date news about real estate.
6. Holiday – create a campaign around a holiday.
7. Piggy back an event – For example, for a coffee shop: “Winter Olympic Special: Hot Chocolates and Hot Mochas half off!”  for a clothing store: “Go Team USA: All Patriotic Clothes 50% off!”
8. Quizzes – people love taking quizzes!  Post quizzes on your website and tweet about them with a link. For example, for a weight loss drink, “Is food controlling your life? take our quiz to find out!”
9. Friday Fun Reads – Every Friday post a fun read and call them the Friday Fun Read. I try to find something wacky, but pertains to my business. People love these stories and Friday is the perfect day to post.
10. Youtube instructional series – teach your followers something they will enjoy learning and has to do with your business. Break each tip down into one short video. For example, a jewelry store tweets about the proper way to clean pearls and links back to an educational video on their website.

Remember a good campaign creatively intertwines your business with a consistent message. Be sure to follow through with your campaign, time out tweets, follow up with responses, track results and have fun!

Cultural Sponge offers customized Twitter campaigns! Contact us for more information!

So, you decided it’s time to get on Twitter and promote your business. STOP! I’ve seen many businesses go head first into twitter and not achieve optimal results because they did not follow these simple, yet effective steps.

Developing a Twitter campaign is a great way to drive traffic to your website (increasing SEO), create a BUZZ about your company or a particular product and connect with like minded business individuals. A campaign is much more then just setting up a Twitter account and tweeting nonsense.

A Twitter campaign consists of strategic tweets that produce intended positive results.

Here are 10 things  to do before launching a twitter campaign:

1. Be open minded. Using social media platforms to market one’s business is a fairly new and misunderstood concept. Give your campaign a chance to work and the time it needs. After all, time and repetition are the successful basics to any market campaign.

2. Critique your website. Take an in depth look at your website and ask honest opinions from others. A successful twitter campaign will drive traffic to your website.  When your audience looks at your website they should know what you do within seconds, the navigation buttons should to be easily found, the design should be professional and appropriate to your business, a clear call to action should be visible and there should be a way to contact someone within your company.

3. Get your Twitter profile ready. Upload your logo, make sure to have your company name, bio and website link.

4. Learn about the Twitter basics. It’s always good to know the Twitter basics before launching a campaign. Knowing some basics like direct messages and mentions will help you run, maintain and understand your twitter campaign.

5. Add existing clients as followers. Before starting your campaign, get your follower count up. The first step is to add followers that are your existing clients. Twitter allows you to upload email addresses, finds those users and allow you to follow them. Export emails addresses from newsletter lists, mailing lists and email address books. If you follow them first, the higher the chances are of them following you back.

6. Promote your twitter account everywhere. If you have a store front, post a sign that says “Follow us on Twitter.” Post on other social media profiles, “Follow Us on Twitter, too!” Place a twitter widget on your website. Place a twitter logo on your print material and business cards.

7. Post interesting  tweets for a few weeks and get follower count up before launching a campaign. This DOES NOT mean tweeting about what you had for dinner and what time you woke up! This means to tweet about your company and what your target audience wants to hear.

8. Place someone in charge. Either if you hire Cultural Sponge or decide to facilitate your own campaign, it’s  a good idea to assign one person within your company as a point of contact. This person should be regularly checking your twitter account for any direct messages, mentions, commenting on positive feedback, dissipating any negative feedback and tracking results. Cultural Sponge provides these services for you, but also needs a direct contact within your company to discuss results and the steps within the campaign.

9. Develop strategic campaign ideas. A campaign could be as basic as promoting a new product line and giving a promotional code for a coupon.

10. Track your results. A marketing campaign is made successful by tracking results. Results can tell you many things about your target audience and what steps to take within your business. For example, a restaurant owner decided one day to post a link about weekend specials and the next day post about week day specials. He tracked the clicks on each link and found that 80% of his followers clicked on week day specials and 25% clicked on weekend specials. So he created more week day promotions.

In this corner we have Twitter, 45 million users, and in this corner we have facebook, 300 million users.

DING! Let the fight begin!

I recently came across blogs arguing that Facebook is superior to Twitter and vice versa. While both social media applications have their advantages and disadvantages, I find that Twitter is much better for small businesses.

How Twitter can help small businesses:

• Easier to get followers that have not heard of your business. While using a social media application, you want to get followers that are current customers, but more importantly you want to get followers that never heard of you. It’s much easier to have followers that never heard of your business on Twitter than Facebook. I heard people say that they never accept a friend request on facebook if they do not know them, but on Twitter? They are following many they don’t know. Twitter is like an open online networking forum.

• Short, condensed, value-packed messages. Unlike facebook, Twitter only allows you 140 characters to get your point across. You must make the most of your message and grab the audiences attention. While facebook has a longer character limitation, the home stream is often cluttered with invitations and long messages about your friends days. Is this valuable information?

• Create a BUZZ. On Twitter, more users are open to following unfamiliar businesses and individuals which quickly builds your brand awareness and creates a loyal following.

• Increases your SEO. Twitter allows you to post links with your tweets. You can increase your SEO by posting links back to your website.

• Track campaigns and ideas quickly. If an ice cream store wonders if they should launch peach or banana flavors, they could ask the Twitter world and get an immediate response.

Of course with all these tips, Twitter and any social media application is successful when used strategically. Check out how Cultural Sponge uses Twitter strategically to help businesses grow.