If you’re someone like Ashton Kutcher, then you don’t have a problem getting a lot of followers on Twitter. If you’re someone like Ashton Kutcher, you can publicly challenge CNN to a Twitter popularity contest to see who would get 1 million followers first and then beat one of the largest broadcast news organizations in the world. For all the rest of us who aren’t someone like Ashton Kutcher, we would recommend the following to expand your company’s online marketing campaign into the 140-character realm of Twitter.

How to Twitter for your company:

1. Before writing your first Tweet, make sure your company’s user profile is completely filled out, especially the bio, website link, user profile picture, and background theme. These elements all lay the foundation for branding your company to fellow Tweeters.

2. Make your company a constant presence. If you’re serious about building a strong online marketing presence in Twitter, you need to consistently be available to post valuable information and respond to any questions. The concept behind Twitter is that Tweeters are constantly looking for new information and are looking to obtain it in the fastest way possible, and so to be effective on this site, you need to provide what your followers are asking for. One tweet may seem like a drop in a bucket, but hundreds and thousands of tweets will start to add up and help build your company’s online marketing campaign.

3. Search for followers. Twitter allows you to search for other Tweeters by their name or user id (if you already know them) or through keywords. Keywords in twitter are identified with the # sign, like #iranrevolution. Search for keywords or trending topics in your company’s field of products or services and select to follow other Tweeters who are interested in or involved in this field. Tweeters you click to follow also have the option of following you back. You can check to see if they do at friendorfollow.com and decide to stop following them if they don’t reciprocate. You should also include keywords in your own tweets to let other people more easily find you.

4. Be yourself. Don’t use Twitter as a soapbox to directly market your company’s products or services. Offer information to set yourself up as an expert in your company’s field or answer questions about your field to help build a potential client base.

5. These are always good reminders: use good text slang grammar and spelling. Make sure your Tweets are clear and focused. There’s poetry in writing a good 140-character Tweet. Always include shortened urls instead of the entire url for a hyperlink in a Tweet.

6. Retweet interesting information you come across, share your friend’s tweets with others, and always acknowledge your Twitter friends and new followers to build a stronger and more supportive base.

Bottom line, it takes a large investment of time and energy to learn how to twitter effectively to build a strong online marketing campaign for your company.

– Stephanie

While you may not be able to claim that Iran’s protests can be called a Twitter Revolution, the way news is being spread from Tehran does offer an insight into the online marketing powers of Twitter.

The New York Times wrote that critics disagree with naming these protests a Twitter Revolution because protests throughout Tehran were actually organized in more conventional ways – through word-of-mouth, websites, and text messaging – and not with tweets.  But even though Twitter and its tweets may not have been the instigator, this micro blogging site has managed to draw a great deal of global attention to the protests in Iran and keep this attention trained there.

All tweets related to Iran’s protests are tagged with the keyword “#IranRevolution.”  When I checked the Twitter feed for this keyword, I read a dozen posts that had been posted within the last 20 seconds.  One of them read: “clashes in 7 Tir Sq and Valli Asr Ave:street fires & tear gas;shooting heard-many militia #evileader #iranelection #Mousavi.”  By the time I had finished reading this tweet, 137 more tweets had also been published.

This is one of Twitter’s main marketing tools. While it may seem that one tweet will not garner much attention, multiple tweets can start to take on a whole new meaning.  A compilation of tweets has built a strong personality and sent a strong message from Iran’s protesters to their Twitter followers and, through the powers of Retweeting, has virally spread this message to the rest of the online community.

Twitter’s second main marketing tool is that there are so many different avenues to post Tweets.  You can post a Tweet from a phone, Web browser, or any number of third party web-based and desktop applications.  This functionality makes it much harder for Iran’s government to monitor and shut down Twitter than it would for a more conventional social-networking site like Facebook.  This portability also gives Tweeters the ability to post on the go.  While some mainstream news organizations have found it difficult to get out into the streets of Tehran and verify stories, Tweeters have helped to send out raw first-hand reports from the streets of Tehran, although some did later prove to be false.

Despite these posts, the news streaming from Tehran through Twitter’s applications gives a strong insight into how this site has been used to build a global online marketing campaign for Iran’s protesters.

– Stephanie