Using Twitter To Gain Information About New Markets Online
Twitter is undisputedly one of the most exciting online tools in recent Internet history and one of the most powerful marketing networks if you don’t start off trying to sell anyone anything, until you’ve developed a relationship first. After all, Twitter is the place anybody who is anyone, goes to associate themselves with others of similar interests and to learn about things they may not have known previously they were interested in! Here is how to gain insight into new markets online.
When I want to know more about what’s important to Twitter users, I do a survey or a poll. To accomplish this I use a Twitter application called, TwtPoll. The beauty of TwtPoll is that you can use it on other social media sites including FaceBook. TwtPoll will give you a colored, pie chart of survey results that is easy to read even at a glance. TwtPoll will also tell you the total number of participants who completed the survey.
You want to gather as much information about Twitter users as it pertains to your interests first and foremost and collect information about what Twitter users are interested in, as a means for content creation. If, you knew that many people who use Twitter are curious about increasing their financial security, wouldn’t you want to write about that?
If, you knew that many people on Twitter are concerned about becoming better users of Twitter, wouldn’t you want to create content that helps them address their issues regarding how to use Twitter effectively? You don’t have to of course, but to overlook the concerns or problems that some Twitter users are having, would be a missed opportunity to brand yourself and to brand your site.
You can even search or browse TwtPoll for any recent polls on Twitter. Just click on “Search/Browse” in the upper-right of the main TwtPoll page and you’ll be brought to another page with a search box. Type your keyword or word phrase into the search box and TwtPoll will return the most recent polls. If, there are no search returns, just modify your search by broadening your keyword or word phrase to more than one word or fewer words and search again. TwtPoll gives you the ability to retweet your survey, share it with others on FriendFeed, and post it on identi.ca, another awesome micro-blogging platform.
Another contender that is also worthy of having a look at is PollDaddy, from the powerhouse blog and web development company, Automattic. Automattic has a stupendous array of products from its award-winning blogging platform, WordPress, its stellar comment and trackback spam-prevention plugin, Akismet, to its open-source, forum platform, bbPress
I’ve come to enjoy and respect the products and services of Automattic. This blog is just one such Automattic product. They make wonderful open-source products that are free to use and implement. PollDaddy is no exception. You can put together a poll and send it to your followers, but bear in mind, you have to keep your poll questions to 110 characters. That should be easy to do, after sending tweets on Twitter that limit you to 140 characters. You can even publish your poll in 32-plus languages.
A rather newcomer to the Twitter Polling Environment is StrawPoll, where you set-up your poll directly from the StrawPoll website. Some people may find their site colors a bit much, but it gets the job done in 140-characters or less. You’ll have to share your Twitter username and password, like so many Twitter applications in order for StrawPoll to get the opinions of your Twitter followers, but that’s the price you pay for information. You decide if you’re comfortable with that.
Like TwtPoll and PollDaddy, StrawPoll is free and customizable to suit the needs of the majority of users. If, you require a private labeling campaign, that too is available for a price. How much exactly is dependent on the additional features you require, so it’s best to check with the respective platform that you will be using to get the actual cost, as prices can change without notice.
Doing a survey on Twitter is just another way to get information about those Twitter users who take the time to complete your survey. You could include an incentive of some sort for those who take the time to complete your short survey, like enter them in a contest that gives them something of practical value that they could use in their marketing effort or online business. It could be anything that is within your marketing budget or it could be something that you created and costs you nothing. You will discover opinions, questions, answers and suggestions that will enable you to find new markets and niches and ideas for fresh content and media to help you in your business online and offline.
Setting up a contest to run simultaneously with your survey is a viable way to get Twitter users to not only provide information about the topic you wish to explore more with your survey, but to also get new followers for your Twitter account. Generally, as a requirement to completing a Twitter survey, you must be a Twitter member and oftentimes, there is also the requirement that the person completing your survey needs to be following you too! The same general rules are applied for admission to your contest.
One of the best Twitter Contest Widgets available from Cheddr Media is free to bloggers and webmasters. You can create interactive contests on a wide range of interests. For example, you can create contests about “the best way to make money online,” “the best work-at-home program online,” “the best niches to make money,” the funniest videos,” the best photos,” or “the best marketing tips,” or any range of subjects you choose.
A less proactive way, if you are just looking for feedback on Twitter, but don’t have the patience or time to run a survey or a contest is to use Cheddr Media’s TwiFeedBack. TwiFeedBack allows users to put it on your blog or website and collect information about your site visitors a means to review and vote on your content and/or media, such as podcasts and videos.
As a last ditch marketing effort, if you really aren’t up for the new or unique Twitter applications mentioned in this article, you can always default back to basics with the tried and true, Twitter search. It has been there from the beginning and is a pillar of Twitter society that is sometimes overlooked in the haste to try the latest and greatest, like SamePoint, a conversational search engine that finds conversations based on your keywords or word phrases across the Internet. You can see what people are talking about and frankly, it’s quite amazing what people are discussing sometimes.
