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Twitter is part of a larger group of social media web 2.0 sites. Also in this realm are facebook and linkedIn which we use but as you will find, it is hard to focus your attention on one and gain maximum benefit. Twitter is free and you probably already have customers and potential customers using it.

Benefits of Using Twitter:

1) Allows you to check up on your customers, naysayers and competition. There are new Twitter search alert tools that allow you to be sent alerts when someone Tweets about your business or competition. This is a great way to stay on the curve. Check out our favorites free tools, TweetDeck, Monitter and SocialOoomph.

2) You can Tweet sales, promotions, product advice and discounts. The ROI is only sales against your time as Twitter costs no money directly. People Re-Tweeting your message allows it to have viral potential. To track Twitters effectiveness use special offers that are only on Twitter.

3) Grow your customer base. By using Twitter actively you allow people to find your business who previously didn’t know you even existed.

Still Twitter results and time vs. return can be hard to measure. Is it the number of followers you have? The number of Tweets you send? How do you gain the most followers? How many people should you follow? How do you cut through all the proverbial noise on Twitter to get your message across?  Do followers actually read your Tweets?

Twitter can be seen as most useful when you incorporate it into an overall marketing strategy and not as a stand alone to an end all be all. Text message marketing that uses SMS based messages picks up where the Twitter shortfalls begin. As a business and advertiser you need to build one on one relationships with your customers. Engaging them in a opt-in campaign allows you to do this and it is much more personal because messages are being sent right to their mobile device.

Benefits of Text Message Marketing vs. Twitter:

1) 95% of messages are read by your subscribers in in 15 minutes. You know with text message markrting that your message is being heard. It is almost impossible with Twitter to measure this. Tweets could go days without being seen, if at all. This will not increase your business when you need it most.

2) The text audience is much larger than Twitter. Twitter is estimated to only receive 22 million unique visitors a month and some say it may be showing signs of declining. On the other hand there are over 150 million people a month who actively use text messaging as mobile communication and this number continues to grow at a rapid rate.

3) You can gain new subscribers instantly in your store, through your traditional advertising and through your customers forwarding your offers to a friend. Adding a mobile call to action which is ease and gives your customers a clear benefit is easy with text message marketing, not so much with Twitter.

4) Moto Message allows you to have text based contests, voting, coupons and offers. There is no easy way to do this on Twitter. The various text campaign types have be proven to be fun to customers, increase loyalty and sales by rewarding your best customers.

As a business owner today, you should embrace all of the new media outlets there are available to reach your customers and increase your sales. You need to build a database of your best customers that have a true relationship with your business.  Twitter can be a nice addition to your marketing but will not be able to replace the ROI, increased sales and customer loyalty that text message marketing provides.

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By using mobile messaging as part of your product, you can:

• Increase product usage in mobile use cases, thus increasing loyalty
• Add features that make your product competitive and compelling
• Up-sell mobile features and increase revenues from product sales.

As part of your marketing efforts, mobile messaging can benefit
you by:

• Providing a higher response rate as compared to traditional marketing channels
• Increasing brand awareness
• Providing a higher ROI while reducing marketing costs.
• More users look at their text messages than their email or other

forms of communications. The response rate with text messaging is more than 10 percent—far exceeding that of any other medium like Web or TV.