Here is a great article that outlines how to use twitter for public relations:

Using Twitter for Marketing & PR – A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Engage your CEO in social media.  Social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers.  But for a CEO, the typical routes to social media can be hard.  Especially if you are a larger or global company.  A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook.  I cannot tell you how many CEO blogs I have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries.  But, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per update, so it is all about short thoughts and comments.  If your CEO can send a text message, they can use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool.  Twitter is actually perfect for CEO or founder who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some interesting opinions on your market.
2. Keep in touch with bloggers / media.  It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter (see below). And you’ll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well.  In fact, I have lots of people I consider “famous” in the marketing and PR worlds following me.  In my opinion, this is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.
3. Monitor your company / brand on Twitter.  A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter.  Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it?  The result was a blog which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.  (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)
4. Announce specials, deals or sales.  If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience.  You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that “Ding” application you could download and would then alert you about specials on flights?  Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of free version of that.  Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
5. Live updates on events or conferences.  If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening (“Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am”) and more.  It is a great last minute marketing tool.
6. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more.  Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter, and I often post links to blog articles on this blog, or other news articles relevant to HubSpot.  A good idea is to post articles on other websites that are relevant to your business, like a customer success story or other PR coverage.  If you have other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar, post links to those too.

Getting Started

1. Sign-up and post a profile.  Visit Twitter and click on the “Get Started – Join” button in the middle.  The rest is simple enough that I think you can figure it out without my help.
2. Write some updates.  The beauty of Twitter is that the 140 character limit is the great equalizer – I am about as good of a writer as Shakespeare on Twitter.  Post a link to a news article you liked with a one line comment, mention an interesting thought you had, or tell everyone what you are cooking for dinner.  Just write something.
3. Make friends.  Making friends on Twitter is pretty easy.  Just surf around the web on your favorite blogs, people’s Facebook profiles etc, and when you see a Twitter box that tells you what they are doing click on it.  That will bring you to their profile and then you just click on the “Follow” button on the top left and you are now following them.  Most of the time they will then follow you back, and the audience for your 140 character insights will have grown by one person.    You can also click on the people that other people are following to find more people to follow.
4. How to post URLs.  Twitter is based on 140 character updates.  If you have a really long URL, that doesn’t leave much room for  Most people on Twitter use bit.ly to take a long URL and make it short.  Give it a shot if you have a long URL that you want to market on Twitter.
5. Monitor conversations about your company.  Even if you don’t join Twitter yourself you can monitor what people are saying about any person, company or brand.  This is quite useful from a marketing and PR standpoint.  Twitter has a search engine that lets you do just this.    You can subscribe to these searches by RSS to keep yourself updated.  Another tip is that you can “follow” all the people you find talking about your company (just click on their username to go to their profile).  If they are talking about your company, they would probably be pretty happy that someone from the company wants to follow them.
6. How to “chat”.  Using the @ symbol before someone’s Twitter username is how people have “conversations” in Twitter.  This makes their username a link to their profile so other people can follow the conversation (sort of).  For example if you wrote “@alison thanks for the cool blog article about Twitter today” that would be a way of telling me you liked this article. Try it out.  It’s not IM (instant messaging), but it is sort of like a publicly broadcast IM serviceRead more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4034/How-to-Use-Twitter-for-Marketing-PR.aspx#ixzz13cL1j0i2

Hubspot’s Twitter Territory Map … Where are the tweeters?

Wanna see more?  If you are a stats lover, check this out

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

I love this article because it simply weighs the pros and cons of in house versus hiring an outside agency or consultant for your social media.  Being a social media consultant myself,  I find that this article accurately shows the pros and cons of each:

Sadly there’s no magic rubric for deciding whether an in-house social media workforce, a social media consultant, or an agency will best be able to meet your particular business needs. Like almost every business decision, it depends on your business’s goals, budget and particular situation.

There are, however, definite pros and cons to each approach. We’ve highlighted some of the most important factors to consider for each style of social media team.

If your business has gone through the process of deciding which type of social media team to instate, let us know about the factors you considered and how you came to your final decision in the comments below.

In-House Team

Handling all social media efforts in-house is often the most affordable route for small business owners. Per hour, an agency’s time or a consultant’s time is going to be much more expensive than a full or part-time employee.

But it’s a big job. Jamie Turner, the coauthor of How To Make Money with Social Media recommends that businesses contribute no less than 25% of one full-time employee’s time to social media efforts. There are, however, benefits to making this time investment.

“People inside can move quicker and always have their finger on the pulse of the company, which makes it easier for them to respond [on social media],” Turner says.

Outsourcing your social media presence to an agency, in addition to costing more, can be slow on a day-to-day basis. An agency that is handling a Twitter account might need to correspond with the company before it’s able to answer a question. Or it might need to ask for approval when unsure if an idea is in sync with the company’s overall business strategy.

Social Media Consultant

There isn’t really a narrow definition of “social media consultant.” Some have niche specialties and can help a company’s in-house team accomplish a specific social media task. Some help companies put an overall strategy in place and then leave the execution up to the company. And others are more like off-site community managers who execute the social media tasks for the company for an undetermined amount of time.

One advantage most consultants have over agencies is that they’re less expensive. “Typically you can pay [a consultant up to] $300 to $500 an hour,” says Jason Keath, the founder of social media education business Social Fresh. “If you put that same person inside of an agency, you’re adding a lot of overhead; you’re adding the corporate structure on top of it that has to be paid for as well.” Also on the cost front, consultants often require smaller time commitments than agencies.

Companies that are looking to fill in a specific aspect of their strategy often find hiring a consultant to be the best approach because they can seek a specific person that fits the niche they need help with. “If you have an in-house team, there may be a lot of knowledge there — and let’s say it’s digital PR knowledge,” says Keath, who has been consulting for the past two-and-a-half years. “But let’s say this team has never done blogger outreach before. Obviously bringing in somebody who has done blogger outreach is really going to speed up the process.”

Companies that plan to start their own in-house teams also may benefit from a consultant approach. Social media consultant Mirna Bardsees herself as an educator.

“Although an agency has results in mind, they are typically not the educators and they sometimes only look at the marketing aspect of social media,” she says. “They may also take a tactical instead of a strategic approach. Many times agencies or in-house teams are used mostly for development and execution; they are not meant to be business advisers who make overall business decisions.”

A consultant can help develop a social media strategy in line with your business objectives and play a role in teaching your in-house team how to execute it.

Agency

Most large PR agencies and many advertising agencies now have branches for handling a business’s entire social media presence. This kind of work differs from that of most consultants in that the agencies handle both strategy and execution. Jim Tobin, the president of Ignite Social Media, counts this among an agency’s advantages.

“Since we also execute for our clients, we have a good understanding of what’s realistic,” he says. “If we suggest things, chances are we’re also going to have to implement them.”

Another argument for using an agency is the wide range of experience that they generally have. In-house teams are typically isolated within their own companies and industries. Agencies have experience across multiple industries and may be able to spot a good idea that an in-house team would miss.

“Social media changes so rapidly that when you work with an agency, they’re typically more on the cutting edge of what’s coming down the pike because they’ve got 100 people out there looking around at the new stuff and thinking about the new stuff and sitting in meetings saying ‘hey, have you heard this new use of Foursquare?’ ” explains Turner.

More people who interact with more clients have obvious benefits in keeping up to speed on the latest social media strategies. But many consultants would argue that it’s more important to have a deep understanding in a valuable niche. Both Keath and Bard have done consulting work for agencies that wanted to learn more about social media strategy.

Hybrid Approach

Most companies use some combination of the above three approaches. Turner says he often sees companies who have an in-house person “on the front line” who runs accounts and answers questions via social media, but turn to consultant or agencies for high-level social media strategy.

“It’s a collaborative approach, even if you go with an agency,” explains Tobin, whose agency handles the social media strategy for companies like Microsoft, Disney and Nike. “The client contributes the business objectives and knows what can and can’t be supported…the agency brings the expertise in the space [because it lives] in social media marketing all day. Together those can be really powerful.”

Here is a link to the full article

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

You may or may not know that one of the components to successfully growing your network is the quality of your connections – meaning if someone who is a “connector” is following you, chances are he or she is also talking about you or retweeting you or checking in at your location.  Those are your target connections when growing your network.  I found some great tips on social media marketing last Friday, written by the Union Tribune.  Here are the tips:

A step by step guide to grow your network with Twitter (great social media marketing advice):

STEP 1: Complete your Twitter bio. Be sure to include information that will prompt people to follow you, including keywords that appeal to their interests. Don’t forget to display a link to your business’s website, and make the most of your Twitter avatar. It’s a small square shape, so pick a simple, bold image to identify your Tweets.

STEP 2: Use Twitter’s search capabilities

(search.twitter.com) to find, follow and reach out to people already Tweeting on your subject. Twitter’s search function is “real time” so you can find people talking right this instant about where to eat, stay, party, or shop in San Diego and join the conversation.

STEP 3: On Fridays, watch for Tweets containing #FollowFriday (sometimes #FF) for follower recommendations. Check out these recommendations and acknowledge them. Then give some #FollowFriday love to your favorite followers, too.

STEP 4: Search through and list your Twitter handle in directories that organize people’s Twitter accounts by subject area such as beer, clean tech, or running. Examples include

Twellow.com, Twibes.com, TwitterCounter.com, and followfinder.googlelabs.com. Take care to avoid spammy tools that automate the following process as that’s exactly how not to acquire the right kind of followers.

STEP 5: Visit the Twitter profiles of your favorite Tweeps to see if they’ve created any ‘lists’ of their followers that you can poach. Begin building lists of your own.

STEP 6: ReTweet things that you think will be of interest to your followers. ReTweeting is ‘paying it forward’ and the more you give, the more you get in social networks.

STEP 7: Attend a TweetUp or similar event where you can mix with your followers in person to solidify relationships as well as find new connections.

STEP 8: Share your Twitter handle everywhere — in your e-mail signatures, business cards, Linkedin profiles, website, signage, and advertising.

STEP 9: Generate great content.

I love fun marketing.  I am female and I think most females don’t subscribe to the fear based or pushy sales techinques.  Case in point, I follow some very successful online marketing gurus but I don’t like their stuff and I read everything but I don’t click or subscribe.  Why?  Because it always seems like they are screaming at me with their all caps and bolding.  It seems like there is always another urgent thing I must do before time runs out and I lose . . .but lose what, because I am doing fine now.

Anyway, I refuse to subscribe to this type of marketing.  In fact, I challenge all of you to “Just Say No” to any business or expert who is acting in this manner!  So, when fun, great, interesting happy online marketing comes along . . .or some interesting, make you smile social media marketing happens, I take part.

This is a shout out to toothsoap.  I have never used toothsoap, but I am thinking about trying it out.  I started following them on twitter for no other reason than that I liked the name.  This morning, I got a “personal” message in my inbox that read:

Alison Elliott, direct message from toothsoap.
toothsoap: Welcome! We are so happy to be tweeting with you ! Now go WASH that mouth out! LET’S TWEET!

I couldn’t help but smile because the message is silly, true and exactly the type of business I want to follow.  Are you thinking about your social media marketing in a fun and happy way?  Are you really thinking about what a potential client might enjoy hearing from you?  Or, are you spamming the hell out of them?  It might be time to reexamine your social media marketing goals!  Please contact me, if I can help steer you in the right direction.  Until then, happy tweeting!

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Unique, Interesting and Great Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

I was travelling recently and had lunch at this great restaurant.  I should give a shout out to Cocina Mexicana y Tequila Fino in Danville, CA for the wonderful food, amazing atmosphere and great marketing!!!!  We ended up eating there twice during my stay there.  And a small disclaimer, this is not traditional Mexican food.  Think California Cuisine meets West Coast Mexican Food.

Near the hostess bar was a great marketing piece.  A printed custom postcard but very rectangular ( 5 1/2 X 2 in). 

HOW DID THE PIECE ENTICE ME (THE CUSTOMER)?

1.  The size:  a funky unique size with a perforated tear off bottom caught my eye

2.  The pitch:  stay up to date on their happy hours, their live events, parties, wine tastings and more. 

3.   The simplicity:  simply add your name and email, pick what you want to stay up to date on, tear off the bottom and hand it to your server 

HOW DID THE PIECE ENGAGE ME INTO AN ONLINE RELATIONSHIP?

1.  The opt-in:  When I sign up, I am now part of their e-mail list and online e-mail campaign

2.  The social media promotion: on the back,  you could win a dinner on us if you . . .

follow them on Twitter, tweet a specific hash code to them
OR
find them on Facebook and check in at their location through Foursquare.

One marketing suggestion from me to complete the expense and increase your ROI:   If I were the owners, I would have made sure this piece came with every menu.  What a great way to pass the time between ordering and food than by giving my patrons the opportunity to check out how they can be in the know about what is going on at the restaurants and possibly win a free dinner!

Sometimes it isn’t about thinking up the social media marketing idea, but about the time to execute it.  If you need some help with your social media marketing implementation, contact us!

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Unique, Interesting and Great Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

This is an interesting social media marketing question – should your small business follow back on Twitter?  In case you don’t know, when someone follows you on Twitter you have the option to follow that person back.  The pros are that you are responding to your follower, validating that person.  The bad part of it is that you are validating that person and what they say on Twitter to the world by saying you are following that person.

That could be bad if the person you are following is not the type of person with whom you would want to relate your business.

I feel the same way about Facebook Fan pages.  I don’t become a Fan unless I really like the business.  I feel that I am recommending that business by being a fan and it is part of my integrity and relationship building that I can recommend a business.  I take it very seriously.

Whatever you decide to do, you should decide one way or another and stick with it.  Good luck and have fun with your social media marketing.

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Unique, Interesting and Great Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Sometimes when something is new, businesses will simply act so they are not left behind.  This typically yields a poor return on your investment and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.  As a business owner, especially a small business owner, it is important to try and minimize the poor marketing decisions that we all make.  One of the ways is to seek an expert who already knows the dos and don’ts.  Another way is to gather the most information possible from trusted sources about what to do and not do. 

Here is a social media marketing tip for business owners:  think of Facebook and Twitter as a friend who is going to tell people about your business . . .better yet, think of them as your hair dresser.  The information you give out will be seen and heard over and over.  What information do you want to give out?  What part of your business would you want to promote through word of mouth?  What can you offer to make your business very attractive to all those eyes and ears?

If you harassed your hair dresser and her clients, would your business (and you) be shared in a positive or negative light?  Be wary of this when planning your social media marketing.  Don’t Harass!  Offer something people actually want and let them take the lead.  Word of mouth will do its thing if your offer or business is amazing.  Spend some time thinking about what would make your clients spend time on your fan page or your twitter.

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of CYM Global Marketing.  To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Unique, Interesting and Great Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  and Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online ,