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17 Styles of Twitter Updates for Online Retailers

Linda Bustos — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:01:16 +0000

What makes a good tweet?

That’s the million-follower question. It’s tough to know exactly what your Twitter audience wants to hear from you, what will make them unfollow, what will make them retweet or @reply, and what will make them buy.

The answer is “it depends,” but you can fill in that blank by testing a variety of tweet-styles and measuring engagement. Here’s 17 to get your creative juices flowing.

Transactional tweets

1. Deals and promotions

Like retail email campaigns, Twitter is a great way to broadcast your current specials. @amazondeals is a deals-only stream, and maintains a consistent format – price, product name, link.

Threadless uses a more conversational tone to romance the offer.

2. Product announcements and promos

Launching a new product? Twitter’s a great way to spread the word. If you’re as huge as Amazon, you may want to have product-specific streams, like for the Kindle.

Customer Service

3. Reputation management / social “listenting”

When things go wrong, customers want fast answers, and many have been turning to Twitter to work it out. The infamous @comcastcares is dedicated to customer service resolution.

4. Product usage tips

Helping customers get more mileage out of your products by offering 140-character-or-less tips provides value, and a reason to become and stay a follower.

PR

5. Business info

Folks follow brands because they’re interested in them, so don’t be shy to share stories about your company — just make sure they’re interesting. For example, give them a peek into your corporate culture, like Dell.

6. Philanthropy

When it comes to charity, it’s good to “not tell your left hand what your right hand is doing” — in other words, don’t be a brag about it. However, inviting followers to join you in charitable efforts is a way to mention it without the “hey, look at us, aren’t we great” vibe.

7. Social responsibility

Ditto for social responsibility. American Apparel gets it’s green on without green-washing itself, giving kudos to a socially responsible organization it’s involved with.

8. News of the weird, human interest

If you’re fortunate enough to have passionate fans who do crazy things like tie the knot in your donut shop, shout it, and shout it out loud.

9. Name dropping

Celebrity endorsement is a form of social proof, so if you get some, flaunt it. Using “Thanks @celebrity” is a humble way to boast about it.

10. Events

Spread the word about local events through Twitter, it’s a no-brainer.

American Apparel doesn’t waste the tweet — even if you’re not a local, this tweet evokes curiosity. How happy is this guy?

11. Human face

It can be tough to humanize your online presence, but giving your staff or executives a public face can help your overall branding. Examples are @BestBuyCMO…

…and Dell, who puts faces and initials of all the contributors to the account.

Engaging tweets

12. Entertainment

To avoid being a talking head about just your company, products or promotions, inject some fun by linking to content in line with your audiences interests. Sell cookware? Link to great recipes, apps or cooking videos. Have a lifestyle/apparel brand? There’s plenty of music and websites that will appeal. Measure engagement by retweets.

13. Engaging questions

Twitter is supposed to be about conversations, but engaging with fans can be a challenge. Bait your customers with a question that screams to be answered. You may even sweeten the deal with an incentive:

Urban Outfitters’ secret incentive is all the more intriguing. Wouldn’t you like to know what was the prize?

14. Contests

Announcing contests may not get @replies, but they are a way to get followers to engage with your company, even if they’re directed to your website.

15. Share with your network

Remember calls-to-action? You will get more shares if you ask for them.

16. RT fan tweets

Give your @mentions wider exposure and acknowledge tweeters who mention you by retweeting them.

17. Promote other content

Twitter’s a great place to point followers to content they may have missed on your other social networks like Tumblr, Youtube or your blog.

How to measure engagement

Most of us don’t have access yet to Twitter’s own analytics, I’m hoping it will give a unified view of which tweets were the most engaging. For now, there are a few rudimentary ways you can measure success.

1. Manually count @replies for each tweet. Yes, this is a pain. If anyone has found an efficient system or tool to do this effectively, please share in the comments!
2. Add query strings to your shared links so you can track them in your regular web analytics, similar to affiliate or email campaigns.
3. Use a link shortener like bit.ly that allows you to track clicks and shares of your tiny URLs.

Finally, consider your Twitter strategy. Having a little variety keeps your stream interesting, you don’t have to be everything to everyone. If you have a tight focus on what you tweet about (e.g. just deals, just new products, just customer service), look for ways to optimize engagement through tone of tweet (good ol’ copywriting), or time of day that you tweet or frequency.

Looking for help with mobile commerce strategy? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team to learn how our ecommerce strategy and mobile strategy services can improve your business results.

Social Link Building: The Latest Fashion in SEO

Linda Bustos — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:05:26 +0000

Back links have always been an important part of SEO, but the type of links that influence search engine rankings have changed over the years.

Links from topically relevant and authoritative sites serve as signals of quality for the content they point to. The authority of a web page, or “Page Rank” in Google lingo, flows from one web page to another through (most) links, making link building a staple SEO strategy, but also one that has been abused by spammers. Thus, the “rules” around what makes a valuable link changes frequently, from an importance on reciprocal links and directories (abused through link farms), to keyword-rich anchor text (abused by paid links), to deep-links, and to today’s vogue – social links.

Search engines have confirmed that social signals do factor in their ranking algorithms, and that Facebook and Twitter links are considered, provided 301 redirects are used by URL shortening services. Social networks like Twitter may automatically add the rel=nofollow attribute, but links can be found by search engines through other data feeds.

Though we don’t know exactly which types of links are counted and which ignored, it’s reasonable that factors such as the authority of the social profiles that share and re-share links and their semantic relevance (the keywords surrounding the link) are important. Social linking strategies should keep this in mind.

Let’s explore 5 strategies:

Like, Share, Plus One Buttons

Simply having Twitter, Facbook and Google Plus buttons on your product pages and email campaigns is a link building strategy in itself. These “chicklets” enable passive word of mouth — free link building provided by your own site visitors, customers and fans. You may not get thousands of thumbs up on most of your products, but the long tail of sharing a few times over thousands of products can add up to a lot of exposure for very little effort.

There’s no harm in adding social buttons to product pages, email campaigns, home pages and microsites, other than the potential drag on your page load speed (like analytics code, they should be loaded after the core page content).

35 million Facebookers (1 in 4 account holders) have shared a product with their network, and 35% are more willing to buy a Liked product, so this is a no-brainer.

Your own accounts

Of course, you can leverage your own social media profiles to share new products, sale events and other content. But just submitting your own links likely doesn’t cut it. Search engines can figure out when links are shared by an account associated with a website (do you link to your site from your profile, hmmmm?) They want to see volume of shares or authoritative accounts sharing your links. Working on building up a strong fan base is essential, as is keeping them interested and making your content “share worthy” – complete with headlines that pique interest. Easier said than done, but a good challenge for your campaign strategists.

Hint: Surround your shared links with relevant keywords or hashtags, and try to include keywords in your site pages that you intend to share. Even if they are shrunk with link shorteners, search engines will follow the redirects and account for these keywords.

Hint, hint: Choose your URL shortener wisely. Though most use 301 redirects, some don’t. You’ll be safe with Goo.gl, Bit.ly, Ow.ly and Cli.gs. For more info, check out this article on which url shortening service you should use.

Paid tweets

If you want Kim Kardashian to gush about how much she hearts your handbags, you can pay your way into her feed through a service called – you got it – SponsoredTweets.com (the same folks that invented the PayPerPost service in 2006).

But note that sponsored tweets are, like paid posts and any other paid links, ethically to be disclosed with the hashtag #ad. Treat paid tweets as advertising, not link building.

The #ad hashtag may be a signal that search engines use to discount such links.

PR

Not Page Rank, but the other-other PR, public relations. You’ve used PR to reach out to bloggers and journalists, and these folk often have Twitter accounts as well. In fact, you’re more likely to get a tweet than a full blog post when you pitch, as they take far less time to craft.

Because tweets sent through influencers are suspected to have more clout with search engines, even one or two tweets of this sort can pay off. If you are reaching out with PR, suggest keywords be included in the tweet, like #hashtags.

Customer campaigns

Share-with-your-network calls-to-action in email and social network channels are an underused tactic. Social links are common, but they’re usually of the “Follow Us” variety, comfortably tucked away in header menus.

Or, footer menus.

I suggest being aggressive, and placing the calls-to-action in the content space of your email. Kohl’s is specific that the call-to-action is to forward the email message, rather than simply Like or Tweet the brand.

(Kohl’s example via Retail Email Blog)

Social linking is important – but it hasn’t replaced traditional backlinks. Stay tuned, next post we’ll revisit some of the tried-and-true strategies that can help keep your link profile growing and well-rounded.

Looking for help with your ecommerce strategy and site optimization? The Elastic Path research and consulting division is available to enterprises selling digital goods and services. For more information, visit us at http://elasticpath.com/ecommerce-consulting/ or contact us at consulting@elasticpath.com.

A New Way to Create Urgency and Social Proof on Product Pages

Linda Bustos — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:04:20 +0000

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you stumble across a feature that makes you think “why didn’t I think of that”?

This time, it’s from antique and vintage marketplace Ruby Lane, which alerts shoppers when an item they are viewing is sitting in someone else’s cart or wishlist – suggesting they may miss out if they don’t act soon.

This tactic makes most sense when products exist in limited quantities, such as clearance and “last one” items. However, any business could display how many cart or wish lists a certain item is in as a form of social proof, as an alternative to showing Facebook Likes or Tweets.

Etsy does this by displaying a product’s admirers alongside social sharing buttons.

This can help fill the gaps if most of your products don’t have a bragworthy number of social shares from social networks. Use your own data!

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.