KickstarterForum.org

[sbriggman]

See the full article: http://www.crowdcrux.com/marketing-your ... g-twitter/

Check out this video on how one creator did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... UNQHXiF9nQ

Step #1: Create a Twitter Account and Posting Strategy
I would recommend creating the account under your business name or brand rather than your personal identity. Why? Because in the future, when you launch the product, whether it is stand alone, a brand, or part of your company, it will be more valuable if it stands apart from you (should you ever choose to sell the company). If you are going to put in all your effort to build an audience, they might as well translate into followers for your business profile.

It is extremely important that you fill in your description and put up a logo/image for your account. Don’t shirk on this. It can mean the difference between someone being interested in your company and following or someone ignoring you.

So you have an account, now what?

The goal of all social media marketing is list building. In the old days, people were eager to build mailing lists of housing addresses so that they could send out advertisements, bulletins, and pamphlets. Then, the internet came along and email addresses/rss feed subscriptions were King. Now, although email marketing is still alive and well, most people receive content through news feeds, be it Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Twitter.

Every time someone follows you on Twitter, they effectively become part of your mailing list and will receive the information you send out from here on forward. How is this different from an email list? Well… it’s not much different, other than you are confined to a certain number of characters. People behave in the same way in that if they receive useful information, they are likely to forward it to friends, or in the case of twitter, retweet it to their followers.

As I mentioned, the goal of social media marketing is list building and this is accomplished by:

1. “Following” potential leads (people who may follow you back that are involved in your industry as consumers or producers). I will show you how to develop and execute a follow strategy in step #3.

2. Providing content that is useful to others or solve other people’s problems. For example, if you are LegalZoom, an online legal document preparation service for estate planning, trademarks, corporations and others, you might recognize that many people want to start a business, but don’t understand the differences between an LLC, Sole Proprietorship C Corporation, and S Corporation in regards to taxes, reporting earnings, and liability.

Therefore, by posting a link to an article that makes this distinction (that you have written or another has written), others may find it to be helpful. This could lead to “retweets,” “mentions,” and visits to your site if you crafted the article. If you have 400 followers and one of your followers retweeted the article to their followers, let’s say they have 300 followers, and then someone in their network retweeted the article to their followers because they found it to be helpful (another 300), your single tweet would have reached 1000 individuals without a dime being spent on marketing or advertising. This could lead to follows, visits to your site, purchases, or pledges in the case of Kickstarter.

Read the full article: http://www.crowdcrux.com/marketing-your ... g-twitter/

Have a question? Leave a comment on this thread! I check the forum once a day.

[Campusgrids]

Awesome read! We are starting to generate a follow on our Twitter account @Campusgrids. We're preparing for our crowdfunding campaign.

Thanks for the post!

Eli from The Campusgrids Team.

[kevindawkins]

Thank you for this excellent guidance

[sbriggman]

Definitely . It takes a while (6 months), but eventually if you are providing relevant content to your audience, engaging in discussion, etc, people will begin following you and you won't have to chase them.

Also, making sure to include your twitter to any kind of article or post you make online (signature in forum) over time will lead to more followers that you don't have to work to get. Idea is to take a very long-term focus .

[sbriggman]

Forgot to mention, few other good articles on social media:

- Guy Kawasaki Social Media Marketing Tips: http://www.crowdcrux.com/kickstarter-so ... -kawasaki/

- Good blogs on social media I frequent: http://www.crowdcrux.com/blogs-to-read- ... -campaign/

[IamGoogol]

I have used Twitter paid ads to promote a few tweets (one for a contest to DeviantArt artists - another one to promote my first Graphic Novel "The Great Invasion") and many people who clicked also started to follow me.
I am not convince about twitter as a tool to add to my everyday life, I find it alienating.

Many started unfollow me one tweet at a time. Why? I did not stick to a line of subjects or some tweets were very personal views, unnecessary to my own business.

I cannot wait to afford a staff member to tweet in my place, as I still do not like twitter. Being unfollowed is too hurtful for me.

[sbriggman]

@IAmGoogol - "I am not convince about twitter as a tool to add to my everyday life, I find it alienating." Yea, people have different views on it. Some find it useful for their personal life, some don't. Personally, I don't think anyone can make the case though that it's not helpful for business.

Some people will follow others simply because they want to be followed. When they saw you didn't follow them back, they may have unfollowed you. Also, maybe your tweets were not relevant to them?

[JJAZ]

Great post. Handy info and I'm well on my way to a great Twitter following experience!

[mwlang]

Great post and some good resources for Twitter. I am also wondering how to also build up a Facebook following (looked for similar article herein).

I've grown from about 5 followers to 60 followers on Twitter and 30 fans to about 200 on Facebook over last six months, but am looking to go to about 5,000 by the time I launch my kickstarter for Chaperone: http://bit.ly/1cizwU5

Its really challenging, but one of the key things I've found so far is to be authentic and talk about the things that interest you day-to-day. With Twitter, if you tweet something interesting and it gets re-tweeted, you often pick up one or two new followers, but with Facebook, I'm not entirely sure what brings in the new fans. Sometimes I pick one up when something I posted is shared, other times when I comment on something interesting by another FB friend and its "funny enough" to bring a new friend request in.

Any thoughts for FB?

Michael

[sbriggman]

Hey Michael,

Good question. I'm going to write an article on this topic, but in the meantime, I can share some of my stats.

My engagement for posts are about 5-10% of my overall audience. This is growing to be increasingly common for all brands due to Facebook's edgerank. See: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/ ... ium=social

Though you may have 1,000 fans. Your reach for a post is likely at best, half that for a single post.

You can increase the reach for your post by increasing engagement for the post (likes, comments, re-shares, etc).

For me, Facebook is another way to capture/retain traffic that I already get from my website. It's not a way to reach people who haven't already found me online. However, if you create viral worthy content, I think you can definitely get new likes from strangers on FB organically. See: http://www.crowdcrux.com/viral-marketin ... h-peretti/

It really depends on the business you are in. For me, email marketing takes precedent, then twitter, then LinkedIn, then Google+, then facebook.

Will expand on this more in a post.