Internet Marketing Tools

A month ago, Oprah sent out her first tweet on Twitter.  In the space of three days, she had 300,000 followers.  Twitter has official become an American icon!  In an interesting article, Kenneth Yu talks about how you can use the Oprah effect to help your marketing.  I had have taken some excerpts (click here for complete article http://tinyurl.com/cq84nq) from his article for this post.  Enjoy and prosper and Tweet!

If you are on Twitter, your world just got bigger!

As you know, Oprah is one of the most influential people on earth. Love her or hate her, her endorsements have turned otherwise obscure books into New York Times best-sellers; she is the reason why The Secret is the world-wide phenomenon it is today as opposed to a niche viral video.  And now, Oprah endorses Twitter above Facebook and Myspace and all the other social media.

It doesn’t take a detective to know that whatever Oprah endorses becomes successful.  We can already see the spike she’s caused; over 1.5 million more users were added on Twitter because of her arrival.  Now you have a fresh audience on Twitter. Twitter’s grown immensely over the last year (1000%) and it’s probably going to grow another 1000% in the next few months because of the Oprah endorsement.

The right demographics are using Twitter

The second point is the acceleration of a trend that’s already growing on Twitter, namely that the older demographics are the first to get on board the Twitter wagon.  The 25-35 year-olds and the 45-60 year olds are by far the biggest users of Twitter right now, as opposed to teenagers or kids.  The Oprah audience is largely of this demographic as well.

This demographic has money, is eager to do business, and have the disposable income that marketers and businesses covet.

It’s not a fact ignored by many corporations either, because tons of brands are getting on Twitter.  Although Twitter has one seventh or one-eighth of the audience of Facebook, there are more businesses on Twitter than there are on Facebook already.

You Know what people want

Oprah now has what is probably the most effective channel of knowing what people are thinking of or about at the moment. Remember that I’ve said before that Google is good for what people are searching for at the moment, while Twitter is good for what people are thinking of at the moment.

As you may know when it comes to marketing research and focus groups, a lot of focus groups don’t really work simply because people in that kind of setting will give an answer they think you want to hear as opposed to what they really think.  On Twitter, it’s uncensored and spontaneous; you get a true feel for your market’s demographic and you can craft marketing angles one after the other to create really excellent response results.

Dominate a marketing channel

It’s easier now to dominate a certain channel of marketing for a particular niche as opposed to dominating the niche itself (unless of course the niche is really small and is at its beginning stages).  We’ve reached a point where nearly any and every niche is crowded.

What you can do is be an authority in a specific marketing niche. And because of the newness of Twitter and because of the pioneering aspect of Twitter you can go on Twitter now and be the expert in your field for that particular channel.  Because of Twitter’s mainstream acceptance, when you position yourself as a Twitter expert, you have a large inbuilt list of buyers and prospects that you can reach out to that will see you as an authority, as the channel expert in your field on Twitter.

To read Kenneth Yu full article, click here:  http://tinyurl.com/cq84nq

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post.

8. Anything and I do mean anything you say can and will be retweeted.

It’s crazy. People RT things you wouldn’t think they would.

So be aware that anything you say can be spread. So be very cautious about saying anything negative about anyone.

9. Share your positive energy

I said this before. But I’m going to repeat. Positive energy attracts other positive people.

10. Give first

Do NOT ask people to promote you or your product. GIVE first.

Offer to promote THEM! How? I don’t know. Be creative. Think of something. Anything.

Even if it’s just republishing their article on your blog. Or retweeting them. Let me repeat — give first. Offer to promote others first. By law of reciprocity many will give back to you.

The #1 mistake people make is to ASK before they give.

11. If someone really annoys you, you can go to twitter.com, find their name and on the right side is link where you can block them.

12. Go to associateprograms.com and search for affiliate programs in your niche market. Find the names of the product creators and look ‘em up on Twitter.

People who have products with affiliate programs also have lists. Make friends with ‘em. Do something to promote their product and tell ‘em about it. That WILL get a response in most cases.

13. Offer viral ebooks and reports on Twitter.

Instead of blatantly promoting your product, it’s better to offer a little report or ebook with a decent chance of others retweeting it. Use Twitter to PULL more than to PUSH. This is PULL marketing.

14. When you run across a cool web site or resource tweet it to your list.

15. Do NOT send a lot of messages without the @ symbol.

You want to send most of your messages to individuals using the @ symbol.

16. Go out of your way to promote others to your Twitter list. They’ll reciprocate some time in some way.

17. When you find a good blog post on someone’s blog, pass it along to your Twitter list.

This endears you to the blog owner. Even if they aren’t on your Twitter list, there’s a decent chance word will spread back to ‘em. This IS the age of instant communication.

18. Learn to Twitter on your iPhone or cell. Yes, you can do that too.

19. Understand that in the big picture your goal is to find people who have lists and can promote your products then make friends with ‘em.

That’s your ultimate objective. But you don’t get there by ramming your product down people’s throats. You get there by being an ATTRACTIVE PERSONALITY that others gravitate to. It helps if you pass along cool resources and on occasion say things that are profound or retweetable.

20. Inspire others to go for it and pursue what they know they should pursue but don’t have the courage to do it.

Be a cheerleader for people’s highest and best interests.

21. Use Twitter strategically to meet and network with list owners.

Do NOT end up twittering away time you really should be using to create products or do other promotions. Use Twitter. Don’t let it use you.

Please pass this cheat sheet along to others with the resource box below. And then hit me with your feedback and comments on my blog. Let me know if this helped or inspired you:

http://www.marlonsnews.com/?p=197

Your comments are always welcomed….