Social networks - Twitter, Facebook and co. - important in the marketing mix?

Having been in the computer business for around 20 years now, I am familiar with the often hesitant way in which many companies deal with new technologies. However, this article is not really about brand new technologies, but about social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. These have been showing a steady (strong) increase in user numbers for several years now - according to its own figures, the platform had almost 14 million users in Germany in February 2011. Twitter has significantly lower user numbers, but is also growing steadily. This means that the most widely used social networks have an enormous reach - for comparison, the BILD newspaper, for example, has a circulation of around 3 million copies per day. Reason enough to take a closer look at social networks.

Twitter - the most popular short message service on the Internet with 140 characters

The completely free short message service Twitter is probably the simplest social network - only short messages of up to 140 characters are sent here - also known as "microblogging", similar to SMS messages. The service was launched in March 2006 and has been growing in popularity internationally ever since. According to many renowned media outlets, the Twitter messaging service has been responsible for a number of political upheavals in recent years. But how does Twitter actually work?

In the beginning there was the Twitter account...

If you would like to use Twitter, register First register as a new user. If you represent a website or a company, choose a user name that is as close as possible to the name of the company or website. As the number of Twitter users is constantly increasing, it can happen that the exact name is no longer available. In this case, you can use the underscore character (_ [Shift]-[-]) as a separator. During the registration process, you already have the option of following other Twitter users from certain subject areas. Every message from a user you follow will appear on your Twitter homepage. Conversely, all users who follow your account (followers) will receive your sent Twitter messages. A social network practically always includes a reasonably meaningful description and an avatar (user picture). You can configure all these settings in the Twitter bar at the top of the screen under the "Settings" menu item. Of course, you can also use your company logo or the logo of your website as the user picture.

The effective marketing benefits of the Twitter news service

For you as an entrepreneur, the question of the effectiveness of Twitter naturally arises. After all, someone has to take care of this channel, and that costs time and therefore, in most cases, money. However, if you know how to use the Twitter channel professionally, this investment is usually worthwhile. On the one hand, Twitter messages always guarantee up-to-date content, which you can easily create, and on the other hand, Twitter messages can also be published very easily and flexibly on your website. This makes it very easy to keep your website up to date with the latest content, which ensures more returning visitors to your website. For integration into your own website, Twitter offers Plugins which can be integrated into your own homepage as a simple HTML snippet. If you integrate Twitter messages into your website in text form rather than as a plugin, you will also benefit to a greater extent from a ranking advantage, as search engines can now evaluate the content and classify your website as "always up-to-date". As a bonus, there are many interesting Twitter tools for Mac OS X, Windows and iOS that make it very easy to use Twitter. I will certainly go into more detail about some of these tools in a later post 🙂

But it gets even better: the more followers your account has, the higher the probability that your "tweets" (messages that you send via Twitter) will be "retweeted" by other Twitter users. In this case, other users on Twitter will repeat your published messages. This can look like the following, for example:

RT @IhrAccount: Das beste Mäusefutter aus deutscher Manufaktur erhalten Sie
bei uns mit persönlicher Beratung. Laktosefrei! #Gutschein über 10 Euro für
Neukunden! http://t.co/IhrLink

However, to ensure that your messages have a realistic chance of being repeated by other Twitter users, your message should not exceed a certain length. Remember: a Twitter message can consist of a maximum of 140 characters. A potential Twitter user who wants to retweet your message will in most cases want to prefix it with "RT @youraccount". This means that your message must not be longer than 140 characters minus "RT @youraccount", i.e. 14 characters. Therefore, in this example, your messages should not be longer than 126 characters. Thanks to the possibility of retweets, your tweets can have a significantly greater reach than your account has followers at the time due to the enormous viral effect.

Short links shorten the number of characters for links

Since a Twitter message can consist of a maximum of 140 characters, it makes sense to shorten the links for your pages. Because a complete link such as:

http://www.macxperts.de/service/macxperts_infocenter/homebankingonlinebanking.html

would already take up most of the allowed characters, so you can hardly add any text to explain it. For this reason, you should shorten your links when using Twitter. There are some free services on the Internet for this purpose, such as https://bit.lythat can do this work for you. If you are using a Twitter application for a Mac, PC, iPhone or iPad, such a service is already integrated in many cases. The official Twitter application uses Twitter's own service "t.co" and generates very short links. Another option is to create short links on your own domain with forwarding to the actual page - in our example, this would be http://macxperts.de/ob.

Twitter offers a variety of other ways to spread your Twitter page and your messages. For example, other users can be managed in lists and other users can add your Twitter account to their own lists. Twitter also has certain traditions, such as "Follow-Friday", which is an exciting way to generate additional followers for your Twitter account. I will go into these details in more detail in a later article.

Facebook - industry giant with a free presence for companies too

The largest social network in Germany is Facebook, which is also probably the largest network in the world and, according to its own figures, at times has more page views than Google. In view of the approximately 14 million registered Facebook users in Germany, the question of "why" does not really arise from a marketing perspective - rather the question of "how". But how does Facebook actually work and how can companies and freelancers present themselves on this platform?

With Facebook, everything starts with a personal (private) user account. You can easily create this on the Facebook homepage create an account. Once you have created your Facebook account, you can add friends and be added by acquaintances and friends to their friends list. Every Facebook account has a so-called pinboard on which your messages appear. In contrast to Twitter, where messages can only consist of text (and links), Facebook also allows you to publish images, photos or videos. Any user who has access to your wall can share your posts, i.e. they will also appear on the other user's wall.

If you would now also like to create a presence for your company on Facebook, you can publish a so-called "Facebook fan page" as a registered Facebook user. You can do this very easily at this link on Facebook. Once you have created your page, you are the administrator of the page and can make changes or additions to your page at any time. You also have the option of appointing other registered Facebook users as administrators of your page, so that your page can also be maintained by several users. In contrast to your private Facebook profile, your fan page on Facebook does not have friends, but fans. Every fan of your page receives the messages you publish on their Facebook home page. In my experience, Facebook fans are very active, and advertising on Facebook is not only fun, but also increases the turnover of the fan page operator to a not inconsiderable extent.

Facebook is a bit confusing, but offers an extremely wide range of options

I admit that Facebook - especially for beginners - can sometimes be a somewhat confusing affair. Perhaps this is simply the price for the enormously flexible options that Facebook offers fan page operators. In addition to the "normal" profile, you can use many often free extensions on your Facebook page. This starts with simple FMBL pages and extends to complex store systems directly on the fan page, keyword social commerce. All extensions are integrated into Facebook by means of a so-called "application". The available applications can be researched directly on Facebook and integrated into your fan page at the touch of a button. I will certainly go into more detail about these fascinating possibilities in a later article.

To generate more fans for your fan page on Facebook in the "conventional way", Facebook also offers paid advertisements. A Facebook ad consists of a text and any image and is displayed in the right-hand column within Facebook. Ads on Facebook can be defined quite precisely for specific target groups - accordingly, Facebook then suggests a so-called "CPC" (cost per click), i.e. a price that you have to pay for a click that a Facebook user makes on your ad. I will also take a closer look at this topic in a later article.

Answer to the initial question: Yes, it's worth it!

To answer the initial question of whether it is worth getting involved in social networks, the answer is a clear "YES" in almost all cases. Of course, you should always think beforehand about which target group you want to address and which network is best suited for this. The achievable reach alone is an argument for advertising measures on social networks that can hardly be ignored.

Even if you don't want to start active campaigns right away, I recommend creating profiles on Twitter and Facebook first in order to at least reserve the desired name. This is because, as on the Internet, there is only one name on Twitter and Facebook - first come, first served. In my following posts, I will, as announced, go into more detail about advertising on social networks and hope that you have enjoyed this first tour through the world of social media marketing 🙂