Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Twitter has rapidly become a vehicle for brand marketing and reinforcement, but keep in mind that it’s only partially a broadcasting channel. Many companies are using it as a one-way broadcaster of 140-character messaging, instead of using it to engage followers.

Startup Nestivity, which develops community software tools for Twitter, has come up with a list of the top 25 brands that best utilize Twitter for customer engagement. The list was developed from a study, conducted by Evolve Capital and by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, that was designed to measure brand engagement in that social channel. The research focused on traffic for the 100 most followed brands, and looked at how relationships were created and maintained with customers, influencers or advocates....

Having a social media presence can be an invaluable resource for providing insights into consumer needs, sentiment, and opinions towards a business, service or brand. Social media is by no means a replacement for traditional market research, but it can be used in a broader sense. That broader sense is becoming a widely adopted trend referred to as Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks to an undefined, large group of people or community (a "crowd"), through an open call. Twitter is the perfect platform for implementing such a tactic and will often yield insightful, and sometimes surprising, results. Using Twitter to openly ask your followers and the community as a whole has additional benefits. By listening, organizations gain first-hand insight on their customers' desires.You have the option to follow up with your respondents in real time. Plus, because participants are not being led by moderators or necessarily thinking about the expectations for responses, the answers they give can be more genuine and revealing....

Setting up a Twitter chat is really easy, especially for social media marketers who already know how to utilize the power of a Twitter account. All it takes is a set date, a topic, and a hashtag. You let people know it is happening, and ask them to tell others who might be interested. Then you carry on a conversation at the set time with anyone using that hashtag. But knowing how to set one up isn't always enough. If you want a few tips on how to best create a great chat, you should take a look at some that are already popular. Here are 15 hashtags that have created successful chats....