Twitter's Plan To Make Money? It's All In Your Stream

Twitter employees at work, in a photo tweeted Wednesday by the company. (Twitter)

Twitter will soon make its stock market debut. Its recent record gives a glimpse of several ways it plans to make a profit.

Luckily for Twitter, it's evolved from a simple, text-based service to a more complete media company, with a video platform (Vine), content partnerships (too many to count) and a feed that shows full-blown embedded media in its stream. That content no longer appears in strictly reverse-chronological order, opening up different opportunities for adding advertising into your streams. There are a few ways Twitter will likely bring in the moolah. The company's recent moves have telegraphed the possibilities:Twitter, the social media platform credited for both spreading democratic uprisings and the twerk seen 'round the world, is going public. It's a company that, according to analysts, probably hasn't earned $1 billion in revenue yet, but is valued somewhere around ten times that. Once Twitter stock is available, capitalism governs that it's gotta keep making money.

Second Screen

If you're a Twitter user who still watches any appointment television, like Monday Night Football or, say, Breaking Bad each Sunday, you know how Twitter can serve as a "second screen" to check while watching TV. It's kind of nice to have the vast social media universe there when you want to complain about a ref's bad call, you know?

Twitter's pitch is that advertisers can take advantage of the community that comes together around events to overlay and target their marketing. For example, during the Superbowl blackout in New Orleans in February, Oreo played off the unplanned incident by tweeting out a now-famous viral missive, "You can dunk in the dark."

A Forrester Research analyst told The Guardian that the effort "has not been a success" financially so far. But Twitter's just getting started. To better marry data on social conversations with advertising, Twitter has acquired two startups this year thatanalyze social-network activity related to TV.

Embedded Ads In Your Stream

The changes are subtle if you're not an obsessive Twitter user, but its main timeline or stream had previously presented tweets in strictly reverse chronological order. Now, it bumps up older tweets in order to make conversations read more smoothly. This change presents an opportunity: Since Twitter now shows video and photos, imagine the value for advertisers if their visual ads didn't even have to get clicked on, they just played in existing streams.

Mobile Advertising

Twitter says it has about 200 million users sending more than 400 million tweets daily. And it says nearly 60 percent of the tweets are sent through mobile devices. This is a huge opportunity area for Twitter, which this week bought MoPub for $350 million. MoPub is a global mobile ad exchange, giving Twitter a platform to sell mobile ads that target users based on data. And a lot of that data will be what Twitter has collected from its users. Former Facebook advertising executive Antonio Garcia wrote that the move makes Twitter "the most interesting company in advertising right now."

By Elise Hu.  Article source: http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/221884025/twitter-s-plan-to-make-money-it-s-all-in-your-stream

4 Ways to Use Social Media to Generate Leads

Are you unsure about where and how to focus your efforts to meet your lead generation goals?

Do you use social media to generate inbound leads for your business?

According to HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Annual Report, social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail or PPC.

If you’re starting a lead generation campaign, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are all excellent places to begin, but knowing how to pull leads from the conversations that happen on these platforms takes some knowledge and practice.

In this article, I’ll share 4 ways you can use social media to generate inbound marketing leads for your business.

#1: Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are frequently scheduled discussions hosted by a Twitter account. Each chat uses a particular hashtag so that other Twitter users can follow the conversation even though topics change with each discussion.

Because of the focused audience communities that participate in Twitter chats, they are a great place to generate leads for your business.

The #SmallBizChat is an example of a Twitter chat that successfully engages its community every week.

How do you start? You can participate in Twitter chats in two ways: Join existing Twitter chats that are related to your industry or create and host your own Twitter chat. Whichever route you choose, join in on relevant chats that potential customers would be participating in to make sure you gain visibility with the right people.

You can find industry- and subject-specific chats that relate to your business in this extensive library of existing Twitter chats.

#Likeablechat is a weekly chat that offers social media tips and an opportunity to network with other marketers.

When participating in a Twitter chat, it’s important to be a good participant. This will help you to attract the leads you want for your business.

Use the hashtag set by the host. Ask and answer questions with contributions that are insightful and illustrate your understanding of the industry and your business offerings. Stay on topic and remember—this is not the forum for pitching your services.

Twitter chats are a place to establish thought leadership and credibility.

Join conversations in chat with valuable tips and insights to establish yourself as a credible source.

Here’s how to get the leads you’re looking for.

Once you’re taking part in a chat, research other participants who have tweeted you as part of the discussion or have participated in the chat overall.

Friendly conversation with other chat members can help strengthen your ties and build long-lasting relationships on Twitter.

Follow individuals who could be potential customers down the line and keep tabs on any of their conversations that relate to your services.

Tweet with these connections outside of the chat and, when the time is right,direct message them to share additional links to content or marketing materials you have that will further establish your expertise and what your business could offer them.

Be sensitive and strategic in your pitch. Don’t oversell, spam, over-tweet or be vague with these relationships.

Wait for the right time in conversation to message someone about your business offerings. When you focus on building the right relationships through your Twitter chats, you’re sure to gather leads.

#2: LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are made up of a variety of subject areas, bringing together professionals of similar interests to discuss topics that relate to business. Again, you can find potential leads by either creating your own LinkedIn Group or by joining an existing group that focuses on your area of expertise.

While it’s possible to join up to 50 groups, I suggest you focus your efforts on a few of the right groups for your business.

Join LinkedIn Groups where potential customers or clients may be active, then engage in relevant conversations.

Browse the directory of groups to find the right match, join the discussions and connect with existing members. Begin by consistently posting your own content or others’ content that’s on topic. Participate in existing conversations by answering questions and providing resources.

People ask questions in almost every LinkedIn Group, answer them to bring value and help establish relationships.

Here’s how to get the leads you’re looking for.

Identify group members who continually ask questions about your line of business or members who are generally looking for help. Publicly answer their questions from within the group, providing value and using brevity, then follow up with a more in-depth message by using the Reply Privately feature. This way you have both a public and a private point of contact with them.

The Reply Privately feature is an often-overlooked tactic for generating quality leads from a one-on-one conversation where you’re able to provide value and build trust. This feature is found below a group member’s question under the More tab or by hovering over one of their comments in the discussion.

In your private message, answer their question in full and let them know you’re available to chat more extensively on the topic by phone, if need be. Phone calls within the right context, like a LinkedIn intro, are more likely than a cold call to turn this conversation into a potential lead-builder for your business.

When you focus on establishing credibility with the information you share and then take the relationships you make in LinkedIn Groups to the next step and one-on-one conversations, you’ll gather leads.

#3: Facebook Advertising

Running ads on Facebook can fulfill many different goals, one of which is generating leads from the right audience. Promoted Posts—an engaging form of Facebook advertising—highlight your content in the newsfeed of that audience.

Promoted Posts generate more views of your content than it would organically receive on its own on Facebook, giving it that extra boost.

While Facebook isn’t often conducive to direct sales, you can build trust with Facebook users when you consistently distribute quality content and engage in one-to-one communication through long-term interactions.

Use Promoted Posts to highlight quality content from your Facebook Page or your website. Share a link to your latest contest, ebook, instructional video, blog post, lookbook or other content that doesn’t send Facebook users directly to a product or services landing page.

Signup forms like this one from Offerpop require Facebook users to enter information about themselves in order to enter a contest or see original content.

Here’s how to get the leads you’re looking for.

To help you capitalize on the click-through of a Facebook user, use a signup form that reveals the content on your website or Facebook tab only after the user fills out any required information that you define. This could be an email address, demographic data or geographic location information.

The more information your business has about a Facebook user, the better you can personalize your future messaging to match their interests, making it more likely that they will convert from lead to customer in the future.

With a content strategy adapted to your audience on Facebook and the consistent visibility offered by Promoted Posts, you’ll likely gather leads from your community on Facebook.

#4: Google+ Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts on Air give you the ability to communicate directly with your audience online, in real time.

Consider hosting a hangout focused on your offerings as a business to show the audience your unique value and, most importantly, to show a human face behind your business.

The types of hangouts that are beneficial for lead generation are:

• Customer service sessions
• Interviews with experts and leaders
• Giveaways and contests
• Free product demos
  

  Sephora hosted a Google+ Hangout on Air to discuss what’s happening behind the scenes and to talk with beauty bloggers and experts about the latest trends in beauty.

There are many ways to host a Hangout on Air with your audience. You can allow anyone to join in the conversation or limit the discussion to a few individuals. Choose the approach best suited to your the goals.

From the beginning, define what you’re looking to achieve from your hangout and how you plan to connect with your audience before, during and after the event.

Here’s how to get the leads you’re looking for.

Offer value above all, and use strong calls to action throughout your Hangout on Air. Encourage participants and viewers to interact with your business, learn more about your offerings and give people the tools and information they need to make an informed decision about their purchases.

Record your Google+ hangout and save it to YouTube so you can use the video in a blog post, share it across social media and add it to relevant YouTube playlists.

To further drive leads for your business, add links to the products and services discussed on the hangout in the description of the YouTube video for easy reference.

In the YouTube video from their hangout, Sephora included links to the products they discussed to make it as easy as possible for people to become customers.

Google+ Hangouts on Air offer businesses a great opportunity to create content and connect with potential clients.

Over to You

Social media offers many untapped opportunities to connect with potential leads for your business. These are just a few suggestions on how you can activate your social audiences and generate leads that can affect your bottom line.

What do you think? How are you using social media to drive leads for your business? What social media channels have you found most successful for generating leads? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Author: Brian Honigman  Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-to-generate-leads