Pull Marketing Blog

Social Media Marketing: Twitter Share Button & the #FF tag

The intertubes were ablaze this week with the news that Twitter launched its official share button. Content publishers web-wide can now use a button straight from the source to put next to their stuff so you the - faithful internet reader - can re-tweet it.

Tweetmeme has long offered this function, but Twitter is pushing the button out with some high profile media partners like Gawker and CNN.com. It seems to be a directly competitive move against Facebook's now ubiquitous 'Like' button. The elephants in the social media room are unsurprisingly going head to head for dominance in the 'use us to tell everyone you know you like something online' market. 

We here at PNP extol the virtues of Twitter for Social Media Marketing. There are some measurable metrics with Twitter - your number of followers, number of updates, and link analytics through services like BitLy, to see whose clicking on your links that yo share on Twitter. And as I wrote on here Monday, there's increasing business interest in measuring the weight of influence on Twitter through increasing sophisticated means. 

For marketers or business owners who are dollars & cents conscious, and whose time is their most precious commodity, the vague value proposition that being on Twitter is undoubtedly good can be frustrating. Sometimes I wish there was more I could say about why it has value or how much a Tweet is worth. We do have the advantage of HubSpot's social media tools to measure how many leads come in through Twitter, which is a quantifiable advantage that those unfortunates marketing sans HubSpot don't realize.

For now I spend time on Twitter and accept that it has value, and because I am a dork who enjoys it. Because it is so simple, the user community constantly innovates new uses for it. The community itself gave rise to the now ubiquitous #hashtag. Here's a couple of the ways you can take advantage of these community generated innovations to endear yourself to your followership:

• Utilize the #followfriday or #FF tag to increase your ‘twwethenticity’. On Fridays, use this tag to give credit to Tweeters you like and encourage others to follow them. There's even a FF site that measures influence around this tag. Of course!
• Use the #musicmonday or #MM tag on Mondays to share your current favorite tunes with your followers. As awesome as your product is, people might like you more if you share what's in your iTunes rather than just what you want to sell them
• Use that Tweetbutton you're going to be seeing so much of the share stories you like with your followers. And include a bit of wit about why you are sharing it! Sambang does an awesome job of this and her sassy bits of pre-link texts actually ignited our cyber-friendship.

What steps are you taking to up your Tweethenticity and Twitter street cred? Oh and, Follow us, yo!

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