With only 140 characters for every tweet, Twitter seems to be an unlikely platform for an effective social media marketing campaign. However, users on that website are determined to do a lot with a little, which is something that most small business owners and marketers can surely relate to.
One of the most interesting things about the web service is that it opens the door for some alternate networking possibilities. Unlike Facebook or the imminent Google+, Twitter users become an open book once someone is “following” them online. The emphasis is not so much on who is friends with who, but on which person desires information from which other people.
This results in a strange marketing strategy that small businesses can attempt. If there is a product, service or company that a small business marketer suspects has appeal for his intended customer base, it is helpful to find out if that organization has a Twitter feed. Detectives can then trace backwards to find out which users are following that feed and will begin to understand how they interact with the tweets that they have been following.
From there, it isn’t a difficult task to begin appealing to customers in that same way, even going so far as to “follow” them so that a small business’ messages about discounts, special events and sales can be shared. The difficult part is finding the people that will become a Twitter audience, but after that, it is easy to transform those users into a loyal customer base.