Is Twitter better than Email?

At one time I would have been able to answer that question with a flat “No. Get out of my office.”It’s microblogging. What the hell can you say in 140 characters anyway?

Yet, much to my chagrin. Twitter has survived Fad-dom, and it has settled in to become a part of the marketing equilibrium.

The question of “which” shouldn’t even be on the radar screen. Both are used as a means of connecting to other people, thus increasing visibility of you, your products, your offers, your writing, or whatever your commodity happens to be. The truth is, in terms of connecting with your customers and potential customers there are strengths and weaknesses to both.

Neither should be ignored, and yet both can stand alone in your marketing model. What follows is a comparison, and explanation of how to use both, so that you can make an informed decision on which is better for you, or if you should use both.

How do they compare to one another?

Twitter, the Good and Bad:

• Due to the viral nature of Twitter, you can build a targeted audience significantly faster than Email. And it’s very simple to do.
• You can stay in constant contact with followers without having to worry about being “spammy”. (BUT DO NOT SEND A BUNCH OF SALES CRAP)
• Your message has 100% deliverability to the reader.
• You don’t have to do anything spectacular to gain a followers except provide good content, which you have to do anyway.
• The venue is one where people expect, and want you to post more often, especially if you provide excellent content.
• Also, Twitter is just plain simple to master.
• BUT Twitter is NOT set it, and forget it.
• It is time consuming. It is  a daily thing if you’re going to undertake it, and it can eat a whole day fast.
• Deliverability of your message is 10o%, but message clickthroughs are statistically WAY WAY lower than with email.
• It’s harder to build a bond with your readers.
• It can get hectic trying to keep up with people who leave messages.
• Also, following a lot of people can get kind of crazy, just because the amount of tweets that pour in.

Email list building:

• For most people Email will always be the most intimate way you can connect with your core audience.
• It’s actually less time consuming than most social marketing, once you master the techniques.
• It depends heavily on the amount of traffic you can generate to your squeeze page/lead capture.
• Even if you use Aweber, much of your email marketing efforts end up in the spam folder.
• List building can be expensive, and requires a lot of trial and error.
• Is not terribly simple to learn, or implement, and has a significantly higher learning curve than Twitter.
• Often requires a web page.
• Definitely requires an autoresponder service like Aweber. That’s a minimum of $19 per month, and goes up depending on how many emails over 500 you send.
• Even with all of these downsides, it is still one of the most powerful tools in the Internet Marketing utilitiy belt.

How to build the list: The short version

There are numerous ways to begin building your list, and they suit many varied tastes and personalities. Probably one of the most common ways is via a squeeze page, or squeeze offer.  It’s called a squeeze page because people have two options when they land on it.  a.) They can take you up on your compelling offer of free goods, or b.) leave.

The Squeeze page works like this:

1. For free or very cheap (like maybe a $1) offer someone an outstanding product.
2. All they have to do is give you their email address so you can send them the link to the download.
3. In the process their email is stored with a list management service like Aweber, which allows you to keep sending them useful stuff, and make the occasional offer via email.

Another way to build your list is by participating in Joint Venture Giveaways. Basically it’s like a big flea market.

1. Marketers sign up to be vendors at the flea market, and they entice the passers by with free stuff.
2. The customers (those visiting this digital flea market) can get as much free stuff as they want, because their email address is their currency.
3. If you decide to download the free “gifts”, the link takes you to the vendor’s squeeze page, where you leave your email, and are sent the download link, as mentioned above.

JVG’s can be effective if:

• You find enough quality events, especially some of the more prolific ones (check the Warrior Forum’s JV forum).
• You can write great headlines for your offers.
• And giveaway a pretty decent product which converts well.
• Headlines and product testing both require trial and error.

If you hone the skill and visit a steady stream of events, you can come build up a significant number of emails in a fairly short period of time.

Hosting JV events can bring you about 1,000 or more addresses per pop! But hosting them costs money, anywhere from $150-300 per event to purchase individual software licenses. And, regardless of what the software vendors will tell you, they do have a learning curve, and the software can be buggy as Hell. However, you will probably make most of that back during the event. A well planned JVG can generate several thousand dollars in revenue.

There are other ways to build your list, but I don’t want to belabor the issue.

Building Your Twitter Empire

First, we have to get into the mindset of what Twitter is. In spite of the fact that they call it microblogging – it is NOT really a blogging platform. You can certainly have entertaining and humorous quips within the 140 character limit. You can also get across very concise,  abbreviated ideas. But it’s real power is that it is your own, private link aggregate. You find great content (or create it, which I’ll touch on in a minute) and then link to it. People like your content. People follow.

This opens the door to send them to offers in the future.

So that’s our first step: Find good content.

People who use Twitter do so for several reasons: to be educated, informed, provoked, enlightened and/or entertained. Whether it’s a joke, a video, a blog post, a picture, news article or something else entirely, make sure it covers at least one of these bases. In the next post I’ll have a video which will cover some basics for finding great content. I recommend getting at least a page of good links before taking the next step.

Just as an aside, some of the great content could and should reside – say – on your own blog! Link to your own stuff early and often! It’s a great way to increase your audience and develop just one more connection with them.

Gaining Followers

Now we’re going to find ultra-targeted, rabid followers. Are you ready?

It might be a little hard to follow, so just pay attention.       /sarcasm.

1. Go to the Twitter search bar
2. Type in your niche.
3. Search it.
4. Click on one of the Users in the results page.
5. Check some of their content to make sure they’re in the same market.
6. Follow Them.
7. Click on THEIR list of followers. Repeat the above process above.
8. Rinse. Repeat.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow…  Follow as many people as you can.

The result is basic recipricative marketing. You give. You get. You follow. Then, typically, you will GET followed – if for no other reason than common courtesy. What follows is kind of a snowball effect. Lots of people who follow one person, also tend to check out who that person is following. So, good content, i.e. great, useful linkage, means more followers.

There are a few services, and scripts which will let you auto-follow people who are follow specific keywords, but I’m iffy those. I tend to think organically, and so do a lot of people who prescribe to the wonders of social media networking. The scripts may in fact work great, but building a more personal list over time might actually be more effective in the long run.

But hey, building a massive following, super-fast fan-base is certainly seductive, so I’ll give it a go. If it works we’ll soon find out soon enough.

The Bottom Line

I still don’t think Email can be touched in terms of the bond it builds between you and your prospective customers. There all sorts of testimonials of people doing amazing things with lists of just a few hundred (rabid) subscribers. Twitter is a fantastic tool, though, which should not be ignored. In fact, I think in many instances using the two of them to compliment one another is the easiest and best way to maximize each tool, and push you closer to success in your marketplace.

Over the next few weeks, I’m really going to put a lot of what I’ve learned about Twitter into practice, and see what we can make happen. I’ll be posting videos which will let you watch over my shoulder as I build a business around email AND Twitter. It should be interesting.

So there you have it. Twitter and Email have laid down their swords, struck up an uneasy truce, and have, in fact formed an alliance with the likes of Digg, Facebook, and your blog to take over our lives, and lead us to ruin – or unfathomable success. I don’t know which yet, but I will.