How to use Twitter? Client training preps

I’m preparing for a client training session. The client manufactures custom furniture in Perm, Russia. My task is to train marketing coordinators on how to use Twitter and the business and marketing value of it. The client already has some understanding of Twitter, but he’s skeptical. The following questions are coming from this client:

• Why would anyone want to tell everybody what’s happening?
• What are some examples of businesses using Twitter successfully?
• How to use Twitter for business?
• How to use Twitter for marketing?
• How to use Twitter effectively?

The following is my train of thought for this presentation. I want to hear your opinion, so please share in the comments. First and foremost, I want to get the Twitter intro right. Explaining why a business should use Twitter is key in this case. Here’s what I had in mind for this section:

1. People talk about things they like, their experiences (excluding stupid status updates).
2. There are people who have common interests with you / your company, they are willing to listen.
3. They want to listen to opinions of others on the subject and meet people with similar interests.
4. Even if you doubt you have something to say, you have a product to sell.
5. Talk about your product, why you’re selling it, what’s good about it.
6. Talk about your product with passion, aim to share, not sell, those that look for it will find you.
7. Reach out to others with similar interests, make connections, start conversations, and keep listening.
8. As you share your views or products, people will start asking questions.
9. Respond to those questions and ask how you can help.

Once the foundation is built I plan to talk about Twitter case studies and showcase a few local companies and how they used Twitter to start the conversation with their audiences. If you have a case to share, please let me know, I’d appreciate that!

Finally, after the foundation and case studies material is delivered I’ll move on to talk about how to use Twitter. I’ll discuss setting up the account, setting up HootSuite, creating topic monitors. We’ll also get into some terminology, but it’s probably going to be in a form of a glossary that they can take home. Then, I’ll close with a discussion of a few best practices of using Twitter.

At this point I just want to make sure I got the “How to use Twitter?” part right. Does this make sense? Will this make sense to a novice user? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

On expanding your social media networks

By now you probably have a profile with Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. Also occasionally you expand your network using features like “invite friends from your Gmail account” that each of these tools have. And, naturally, over time your network grows.

There’s one practice I noticed recently that will help you increase your network faster. Instead of growing your networks separately, try expanding all at the same time. Here’s an example:

Periodically, (daily, weekly, monthly) send out a tweet that invites your Twitter followers to connect with you on Linkedin or Facebook.

• Positive outcome: your network grows faster and your social profiles are becoming more uniform (same friends across your networks).
• Negative outcome: you may not want all your Twitter followers to be come your Linkedin or Facebook connections / friends.

So, it’s up to you to use this method of expanding your social media network or not. If you choose to do so, feel free to use HootSuite to schedule your periodic Tweets / status updates.

How do you expand your social media network? Please share in the comments!

Mumiy Troll 2009 Concert in Calgary

In 2008 I was involved in promoting the concert for Mumiy Troll in Calgary. Troika Entertainment, a Vancouver based event management company, got in touch with us at RussianHerald.com to help them promote an event in Calgary. Mumiy Troll was on a North American tour an Calgary could be one of the places the band could visit. As we were fans of the band, we decided that as a team we’ll through 100 hours of our time into promoting the concert in Calgary. The concert ended up being a success getting over 400 people in the room. Such attendance made it the biggest event of the decade for Russian-speaking Calgary.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine, Yuri Konik, mentioned that there’s another concert coming up and Calgary’s Union Events will be organizing it this time. Yuri asked for a bit of help in promoting the event. Now, having the experience of last year, it looks much easier to assess and plan the campaign. So, in cooperation with another good friend of mine, Nadezhda Sannikova, I agreed to help Union Events and my good friend Yuri by volunteering my time to promote the concert. We are into the online promo full speed. Updates will be coming in often, please stay tuned. I’ll try to prepare a marketing review of this campaign once it’s done.