Yesterday we gave you a very brief introduction to Twitter. And that was truly very brief considering there are hundreds of printed books, eBooks and online courses that teach you amazing twitter secrets.
Our point of view is different. We know you don't have a lot of time and we want you to get the best ideas from these Daily Gold Nuggets.
Yesterday we told you to create a Twitter account and send a tweet that said "We have a great selection of #wedding #rings that just arrived."
The words "#wedding" and "#rings" are called hashtags within Twitter. This hashtag feature allows various tracking for you, and ease of search for general users. If someone wants to find all local tweets with the word "wedding" in it they could search for "wedding," or they could search for "#wedding."
Here's the difference:
"wedding" will return all tweets with the word wedding, including one that says "I just came back from my cousin's wedding."
"#wedding" will return all tweets with the hashtag #wedding. Normally, this would only include tweets that are relating to wedding businesses or services.
Now, we're going to switch gears and talk about something seemingly unrelated: Testimonials.
In April 2010, the Jeweler Website Advisory Group launched a program called JewelerReview.com. Even though the jewelerreview.com website is fully set up and shows how anyone can order review cards and pay for the program, we actually set it up for our jWAG Gold Members. The program has been well received and it helps to position retail jewelers against their local competition.
The JewelerReview program is a real-world process with post cards, pen, ink, stamps and a bit of physical labor. But using Twitter, you can achieve a similar testimonial method on your own.
Here's how to get Twitter Testimonials:
1. Ask every customer if they have a Twitter account. Tell them you have a Twitter account and you would love to follow them, and have them follow you.
2. Assuming they do have a twitter account, they also probably have it attached to their cell phone. Ask them if they could take a moment right there in front of you and tweet something nice about you. You will need to give them an idea because they will probably look at you like a reindeer frozen in headlights ('tis the season). So ask them "Would you mind tweeting about us right now? We're new at this and trying to get some tweets to our name. Maybe you could say {fill in the blank here}."
You could fill in that blank with whatever service or item they just received from you. Asking them to talk about themselves maintains the social aspect of Twitter, and at the same time it continues the conversation with their friends.
3. But here's the catch. You need request that they include a unique hashtag for your store. If your store name is John Smith Jewelers then you might randomly use the hashtag #JSJ123. A savvy Twitter user will know that you are tracking that hashtag. If they ask, simply tell them that you will be collecting all the tweets and putting them on your website.
I suppose you'd like to know how to collect those #JSJ123 tweets and actually put them on your website?
It's a simple process that requires you to do an advanced search on Twitter for #JSJ123 and then copy the RSS feed. Then create a Google Reader account and paste the RSS feed into that. From within Google Reader you can select the individual tweets with #JSJ123 to show to the public. From there Google Reader allows you to load a simple widget onto your website. Presto! You now have testimonials appearing on the home page, or any other page of your website.
Alright, we admit that doesn't sound like such a simple process. It will take at least 15 minutes and we can't simply write about it in a Daily Gold Nugget. Instead, we are publishing a short Google Reader Step-by-Step video that will take you through this whole process. Our recent Step-by-Step video covered Google AdWords and can be found on our home page at jwag.biz.
To review: If you have a twitter account, ask your customers to tweet about you using a unique, randomly made-up hashtag. You then capture all the tweets that use that hashtag and make them appear on your website.
The result is that visitors to your website will always see a new list of testimonials from many customers. Website visitors will be impressed to see relatively live Web 2.0 content on your website.
In tomorrow's Nugget, we will give you some daily strategies for tweeting throughout the work day.
