Introduction

Greetings, and welcome to Twitter Marketing For Dummies. You have officially entered into the joyous world of marketing on Twitter. If you want to think about the tool in terms of celebrity, Twitter is the Oprah of social-networking sites. Twitter is huge both in the number of users and excitement.

This idea of communicating on the Internet is continually evolving, and with Twitter, you have the opportunity to reach millions of people in a matter of seconds. The future of online communication is rendering business owners lifeless because of how slow they are to adopt new technology for communication. What if your customers stopped using the phone and moved somewhere else? Would you be ready? Would you read about Twitter if your competitors bought this book? Guess what — they already did.

This book is full of ideas created by the masses about how to communicate through Twitter. Success is the only option, and Twitter can help you with your business goals and aspirations.

So, is Twitter life, and the rest just details? Not exactly, but Twitter can help you create a sustainable communication model to drive more leads, revenue, and customer evangelists to your product. And the best part is, you don't have to spend countless hours researching how to use Twitter to market your products. I did it for you!

About This Book

If you've received your citizenship papers from Twitter and are just starting to dip into the world of 140-character communication, this book is for you. It gives an in-depth look into the world of marketing on Twitter. The majority of the concepts discussed deal with combining Twitter with your traditional marketing plan, creating your following of brand evangelists, and finding the best tools for productivity on Twitter. Most of all, you discover how Twitter can transform the way your business communicates with clients (both current and potential) and increase your sales.

Twitter offers a fun way to communicate with your followers, but it also has huge business potential. This book deals with Twitter as a business tool. As a famous rapper once said, "We are makin' it rain benjamins." To the layman, this expression means one-hundred-dollar bills are falling from the ceiling (which probably makes the cash a little awkward to gather).

I wrote this book to help you gain traction on Twitter and to drive revenue to your business. If you can successfully market through Twitter, you can drive more leads and potentially more business to your door! Do you have a specific topic that you want to find out about, such as building your followers? Jump to the chapter that discusses assembling your Twitter posse (Chapter 7, if you want to go there now).

Avoid blinding yourself with the light bulb that bursts above your head when you read this book. If you tear a page out to post on your wall, or put sticky notes and highlights all over the pages of this book, I've done my job. In fact, flag and highlight as many pages as you want. Consider this book a reference guide to help you define and improve your marketing concepts, goals, and communication strategies on Twitter.

Also, this book doesn't look good gathering dust on a bookshelf. Use it! (Everyone knows the color yellow doesn't blend well with anything.)

Foolish Assumptions

Every author has to assume a few things about his or her audience when writing a book. I made the following assumptions about you:

• You're an awesome individual because you picked up this book. Either way, you're way ahead of the game!

• You either already have a Twitter account or are planning to create one soon.

• You own a small business, or you work in marketing or sales for a large business.

• You want to combine the two preceding bullets and use Twitter to market your business and/or products.

• You are sending out tweets but have no idea what type of return you are getting on your time investment. Further, you have no idea whether your boss is going to fire you the next time she finds out you're using Twitter.

I also assume you have some basic Web-fu skills, such as knowing how to surf the Web. I assume that you may have your own Web site and/or blog, and that you may even have a few social media sites that you visit and update frequently (such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and so on).

Conventions Used in This Book

I know that doing something the same way over and over again can get boring, but sometimes consistency is a good thing. For one thing, consistency makes stuff easier to understand. In this book, those consistent elements are conventions:

• I use italics to identify and define new terms. (I even used this convention to explain the word "conventions" in the preceding paragraph!)

• Whenever you have to type something, I put the stuff you need to type in bold so that you can easily tell what you need to enter.

• When I type URLs (Web addresses), code, or e-mail addresses within a paragraph, they look like this: www.wiley.com.

How This Book Is Organized

The idea of marketing on Twitter has a wide variety of subject matters and ideas, which is part of the reason why this book is broken down into parts, chapters, and sections. The whole point of organizing the book in the For Dummies way is for quick reviewing and reading. If you want to know about creating one or two accounts, you can go directly to the section that discusses that topic in Chapter 2. If you want to know about creating a Twitter marketing plan, head to Chapter 4.

The following sections describe how the book is organized.

Part I: The Future of Twitter in Business

If you need to understand the concepts and future trends of Twitter as a business tool, this part is for you. I discuss the ideas of business development, the growing number of Twitter users, and what Twitter means to your business. This part also describes ideas about how to use Twitter effectively for noobs (people who are new to a given situation or technology). If you're not new to Twitter, you can skip Chapter 2, which discusses how to get signed up for an account and create a profile.

Part II: Building and Implementing Your Twitter Marketing Roadmap

Part II is the most important part of the book. You absolutely must plan your Twitter marketing strategy before you dive directly into the churning waters of Twitter marketing. Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool if you plan your roadmap to success. Read and reread Part II in order to gain the knowledge that you need to successfully implement the rest of the ideas in this book.

Part III: Devising Online Strategies for Twitter Marketing Domination

From building your following to implementing communication strategies, Part III takes a look at how you can use Twitter to grow your business. Does it matter whether you have quantity over quality in your followers? Should you use the auto-direct-messaging feature? (Please don't.) This part provides many answers for you. You need to successfully implement an online strategy before you try to implement that strategy (which Part IV covers). Mastering the online use of Twitter is your key to success.

Part IV: Implementing Twitter Strategies for Offline Marketing Domination

Integration, integration, integration. Nothing can help you market your business more than the combination of an offline and online strategy. Twitter can become much more powerful when you use it to push offline marketing strategies, as well as online strategies. If you want to use Twitter to execute a live event, add spice to your brochure, or strengthen your offline network, you can. This part shows you how to integrate and strengthen all your marketing endeavors by using Twitter, online and off.

Part V: The Part of Tens

Tradition. Plain and simple. The Part of Tens caters to a couple of traditions. First, the For Dummies books all have a Part of Tens, which sums up the more important information to help you on your Twitter journey. I guide you through the top ten don'ts of Twitter, such as annoying people with a hard sell. (Don't do it!). Second, Internet communication lends itself to placing things in numbered lists, so the chapters in the Part of Tens are concise and to the point.

Appendix

Hundreds of people contributed to the appendix. Twitter users from around the world gave their opinion on how to use Twitter for marketing. You can find more than 100 of their ideas near the back of this book for your perusing enjoyment. You can really make the most of driving business and ideas through Twitter by implementing some of these ideas.

Icons Used in This Book

I use the following icons throughout the book to highlight paragraphs that you should pay particular attention to.

A Tip is kind of self-explanatory, right? The Tip icon points out information that can help you use or implement your ideas differently. You may find these simple suggestions very useful.

The Warning icon is the equivalent to the warning label on a lawnmower that tells you not to stick your foot underneath the blades. Warnings help you along your way so that you don't cut off your little Twitter legs.

Where to Go from Here

You're ready, my young Jedi. Go forth into the world of Twitter and dominate your efforts in marketing and driving business through the Internet. But where should you start?

If you already know the basic Twitter ropes, you can skip Part I. But I strongly suggest that you read Part II before you start trying to use Twitter as a marketing tool. You must have a plan in place that measures your Twitter marketing success rate and how you use the tool. Part II describes how to plan and develop a strategy.

If you have a specific topic in mind that you want to know more about, check the Index or the Table of Contents, and then flip to that chapter, section, or page and start reading. And, of course, you can always just start your Twitter marketing adventure at Chapter 1.

If you have any questions regarding marketing on Twitter, feel free to check out my blog at www.kylelacy.com or e-mail me at kyle@getbrandswag.com.