On the matter of Twitter marketing: a young guy, self-identified as a high school student, followed me on Twitter. I followed him back. Whereupon he DMed me (thati is,sent me a Direct Message, for me eyes only) to say he would appreciate it “alot” if I checked out his Kickstarter campaign. To which he featured a link. Interested in his approach, I did check out his Kickstarter page. Turns out he is raising funds to support his fledgling customized coasters endeavor. His coasters are the type used for placing wet beverage containers on.

He set the Kickstarter fundraising bar low, at $500. He’d well surpassed that amount according to Kickstarter’s running count of funds raised.

Since I’m currently involved in setting up a Kickstarter Campaign for a client, I was interested in his marketing approach via Twitter.

A DM With A Valid Call-To-Action

His DM to me stood out from the normal stuff you get when you follow someone on Twitter. That’s usually something like “Thanks for following me. I post regularly at XXX” or some such useless drivel.

I’ll have to keep this approach in mind as the deadline draws nearer for dropping the flag on my client’s Kickstarter campaign. Will in fact use it. Seems like a good use of Social Media to me. It’s an honest approach: “I followed you for a reason, here’s my reason: I want you to support my Kickstarter campaign. And I also want you to know about my products, which you might be interested in purchasing yourself.” What’s wrong with that? Nothing, so far as I can tell. Twitter’s set up for just this type of thing — communicating a call-to-action to strangers.

I’m always interested in learning more about using Twitter as a promotional device. What are your thoughts?

My one criticism of my young correspondent’s DM is grammatical in nature: mashing together “a lot” into “alot.” Not a pretty sight, that.

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Doug Hovelson, author of this blog post, is an experienced Media relations and Public Relations professional working out of Minneapolis. He’s helped dozens of companies – from Fortune 500 size to start-ups — grow their businesses with effective public relations programs. He can be reached at 612-722-5501 or at doughovelson AT MSN Dot COM.

Filed under: Creative Marketing, Minneapolis, Public Relations, Public relations practices, Social Media Tagged: call to action, Kickstarter, media relations, social media marketing, Twitter