Twitter's entry into the media mainstream has been dramatic. Most online marketers I spoke to back in January 2009 weren't too excited about its potential. In fact, I was pretty lukewarm about Twitter myself. Many considered it to be a narcissistic banality broadcast mechanism. 'I'm on the bus'; 'just having a coffee'. Who cares?

Since the beginning of the year, Twitter has come into its own as a heavyweight messaging and community building medium. So what’s changed? Well, part of the problem in the beginning was the tone set by the site itself, which asks:

This invites many of the wrong kind of responses: non-useful, uninteresting content. It would be absurd to expect the answers to this question to be constantly stimulating. The difference we have seen is that people are now using Twitter to ask useful questions themselves such as:

People also use Twitter as a one-to-one messaging application:

A lot of people use it to share relevant valuable information about their business sector or interests. Much of the use I see for Twitter resembles the way people use email discussion groups, which is why Sam Michel is such a naturally good tweeter. He has been doing it brilliantly for years in email discussion groups. Twitter has also become a very high profile customer service channel. Not to mention the life and death political issues raised via Twitter by Iranians after the 12th June elections.

So Twitter is no longer a banality broadcast medium. It's now seen for the potential it really has: as the most accessible form of Web publishing. Let’s say it costs £10,000 to put up and maintain a decent Web site and keep it updated and interesting for 6 months. It costs, maybe, £1000 to put up and maintain a decent looking blog for that period of time (probably more, given the rightly high expectations of blog content quality). To participate on Twitter, you don’t need design skills or images, or the ability to write good paragraphs day in and day out. You don’t need a content management system; you can be useful and interesting straight away. And you are immediately on the same level as Stephen Fry in terms of look and feel. The barriers to entry are much lower, which is a very good thing.

Twitter has also enabled a one-to-many short message service (SMS). It's like sticking a megaphone on your mobile. There is a lot of crossover between email marketing and Twitter:

• Both are broadcast media and one-to-one media at the same time
• Both can be used to create and organize discussion groups
• You can unsubscribe and resubscribe to email and tweets from any particular source.

With both Twitter and email marketing, the closer you are to sharing quality content, and the further away you are from salesy broadcast, the better you will do as a business. The same rules about timely, relevant and valuable content apply to both email marketing and Twitter.

So, here are my recommendations for harnessing Twitter to work in tandem with your email marketing program:

1. Post a shortened link to the online version of your email marketing message on Twitter.

2. Include 'post this to Twitter' calls-to-action in your email marketing content. Your brand advocate recipients will spread the word for you, multiplying your reach and adding personal credibility at the same time.

3. Local relevance is key. For example, if you are a retailer, your local store managers should be encouraged to tweet about local events to a local audience, i.e. 'delivery just in…'; 'bread is out of the oven!'. Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, is famous for organizing local events through Twitter.

4. Include a 'Follow us on Twitter link' in your email marketing messages.

5. In your Web analytics you should be tracking social media traffic activity. This should appear in your ‘top referrers’. See Dan Miller’s excellent blog post on this subject, "Concrete Results from Social Media".

6. Track the top keywords being used around your brand on Twitter, and use them in your subject lines.

For more useful Twitter tips, check out these other articles here on LyrisHQ.com:

• How Marketers Can Tweet Their Companies to Greater Success
• The Lyris Team’s First 100 Days on Twitter - Plus: 10 Twitter Tips

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About the Author

Andrew Robinson is the director of international professional services at Lyris, located in the UK office.

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