An article on Collective Thoughts about raising your Twitter profile got me thinking about the social media wave that is upon us. The article discusses why Twitter is a viable marketing tool and how the writer went about increasing his Twitter profile in 30 days. It has many valid points and yes Twitter can be a great marketing tool but so can blogging, social networking, wiki’ing and forums – to mention but a few. If you spend time marketing in each and everyone of these as the buzz out there would suggest, you would have very little time to spend on actual revenue generation or traditional marketing efforts (woe betide you would do those).

Its important (as with any marketing project) to do some research and planning up front when considering these new collaborative web 2.0 technologies. Don’t just rush out and start Twittering your head off just because its the latest in thing. Take time to consider your client and determine whether they are Twittering. If they are then its great to use Twitter as a marketing tool but schedule the time you spend Tweeting and set goals so that you can monitor the effectiveness of your efforts. Same goes for the other Internet networking hubs, always ask yourself first and foremost if your customer is active in these and how they are using these technologies. Plan your marketing campaign up front: time spent, strategy, goals and measures. Otherwise you might find that you get to the end of the day and Twitter has sucked up all your time and nothing else on your list has been done. Take it from me I am talking from experience!.

Posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 and filed under Business Development, Corporate Blogging, Internet Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Computing, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0.