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Dell makes USD1million from Twitter – Here’s how to start!

Dell shook the PC market with its direct to customer strategy plus innovative inventory management system.

I was once told that that Dell had more finance people in Penang rather than assembly people because when you make a payment online, Dell has a lead time to use your money when you credit payment immediately. I am not sure how true this is, but it does make sense (pardon the pun).

Dell in December 2008 made headlines again when it announced that it made USD1million via Twitter. You could say USD1million isn’t made, but Twitter is free and that means a 1,000,000% profit.

Wrote Internet News, “Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts.

“People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company's Home Outlet Store.

“They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.”

So how can you sell on Twitter? Here’s some suggestions.

Tip 1: Build your Twitter base

You can’t sell much if you have 0 followers so you need to build your Twitter followers.

If you just want to sell, make sure you have something special to offer on a regular basis.

If you want to go beyond selling, use your Twitter as a communication channel. Or you might even use Twitter to position yourself as an advisor to your solutions in general.

Tip 2: Work with reseller on the promotion

If you have a reseller network, work with your Premium reseller to run the promotion.

Start the Twit on Monday with regular updates on the promotion. Say you are pushing A, use the next 4 working days and Twit links to information about product A. These links could be internal sites or even other blogs that have written about A.

This help builds the excitement and knowledge of the product and the promotion.

Tip 3: Promote your Twit account regularly

Promote your Twit account at every available opportunity. Do it at your events, be it if it is for media, social media, resellers and even customers.

Get bloggers to post a link to your account in their posts. You could even consider running an exclusive Twitter program and give it to the first the 10-5 bloggers who blog about your event. This will benefit their readers and bring in more readers.

Tip 4: Think long term

Most of us are interested in quick results and ROI because there is a need to justify the money spend in that marketing activity.

However, doing this on Twitter if free, for the moment. The other cost is time. My guess is that it might cost you a 1-2 hours a day or less to search for other links and monitor the communication on Twitter.

Tip 5: Use search.twitter.com

Regular go to search.twitter.com to search on Twitter if anybody is Twittering about your product and reply to them if you can.

End each post with #productA to tag your posts into a grouping. # is known as hashtag and it allows for better organisation and search.

If you have any questions about Twitter and how it can help you with your sales marketing, twit me at www.twitter.com/socialpr or email me at aaronkoh(at)gmail.com.

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