Marketing Your Store With

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Twitter Basics Twitter is a free micro-blogging platform, which simply means that it’s a way for anyone to broadcast short messages to a group of followers. Followers can receive messages on their computer or mobile phone. Twitter started as a way for people with common interests to easily stay in touch and communicate by asking one simple question, “What are you doing?” And now, with millions of users, Twitter has become a valuable business tool as well. Retail Businesses Use Twitter To: • Announce New Products. • Promote Limited or Distressed Inventory. • Announce Availability of Popular Products or Brands that Shoppers Frequently Ask About. • Announce Promotions or Distribute Coupons. • Inform Customers of Special Events. • Broadcast Store Information such as Location, Hours, Most Wanted Items, Buying Hours, etc. • Communicate with Customers and Build Repeat Business. Terms to Know: Handle: This is your Twitter username. For example: MGRBurnsville. Tweet: Tweets are the messages that you broadcast. They are limited to 140 characters each. Followers: People who have subscribed to follow your tweets. Following: Other Twitter users who you are following. Replies: Replies are tweets that are directed toward a specific user. They are viewable by the public and are signified by adding “@[username]” to the beginning of a tweet. © Winmark Corporation

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Direct Messages: Direct Messages (DM) are private messages sent directly to another user. Retweet: This is a way for you to pass on a tweet from someone you follow to your followers. Retweets begin with RT. Hashtag: A hashtag (#) is used to categorize tweets in your feed. For example: #NewItems, #Specials, #Strollers. This helps users and followers find and search for subjects they’re interested in. These are generally placed at the beginning of a tweet.

Account Setup 1. Visit Twitter’s home page at http://www.twitter.com and click on the Get Started button.

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2. Fill out the form including your real name, desired username/handle, password, email address and click “Create My Account.”

Full Name: 20 character limit. Use full store name. Example: Once Upon A Child, Music Go Round, Play It Again Sports, Plato's Closet.

Username: 15 character limit. Start with store abbreviation then city/area identifier. Examples: ouacajax, mgrwoodbury, piassandiego, pcedenprairie. When the city is too long, abbreviate the city as well. Example: piaswstp for West St Paul. Big City names or market names where there are multiple stores can not be used (i.e. piaschicago) unless the entire market is coordinating the Tweet effort via a co-operative.

Email: Use the main email address for the store, not the address of the person doing the tweets.

* If someone other than the store owner is managing the Twitter account, make sure the store owner has all of the contact and login information (Username/Password).

3. Now that your account is setup, you’ll want to click on the “Settings” option in the upper right-hand side of the page.

4. The Account tab will allow you to create a profile that your followers or potential followers can access to learn more about your business. You’ll want to include your web address as well as your store’s physical address and location.

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More Info URL: If you have a store website, use that address. If not, use the corporate website address.

One Line Bio: 160 character limit. Begin the bio with your city/location. This is important for when a user is searching by store name and multiple franchises may show up. Even though you have put your city in the Location section, it will not show up in the Find People search. This guides them to follow the store relevant to them. Follow the location with the brand description - see suggested descriptions below.

Location: 30 character limit. Start with city then state or province. Add street address and/or mall name in parenthesis if room. Example: Maple Grove MN(13621 Grove Dr).

Suggested One Line Bios: • Play It Again Sports: City, State. We buy, sell and trade new and quality used sports and fitness equipment. We buy used every day. • Plato’s Closet: City, State. We buy and sell brand name, gently used trendy clothes and accessories for teens and 20’s. Our inventory changes every day! • Once Upon A Child: City, State. We buy and sell gently used children's clothing, toys, baby furniture, equipment and more! Everything is checked for safety. • Music Go Round: City, State. We buy, sell and trade new and quality used musical instruments, accessories and pro sound gear. Guitar and keyboard lessons also available.

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5. Click on the Picture tab to add an approved logo or photo of your store to your profile and tweets. If you would like to use a company logo as your profile picture, you must use an unaltered version of a currently acceptable logo. See the extranet under Marketing > Logos for a list of approved logos. You can also click on the Design tab to choose a theme or colors for your Twitter page.

6. Click on the Notices tab to to tell Twitter how often you want to be emailed. If you start getting too many emails from followers, you can change these settings later.

7. That’s all there is to it. You might want to take some time to find some other local businesses or other franchises on Twitter to see how they are promoting their businesses. And if you follow them, there is a good chance that they will follow you as well and you’ll have your first followers.

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Finding Followers Now that you have a Twitter account, you’ll want to encourage your customers to follow you. This can help increase repeat business and help you get the word out about products and promotions. Here are some ideas on how to get followers: • Place a Follow Me on Twitter link on your website. You can also add a Twitter badge to your site that will display your Tweets. See: http://twitter.com/badges. • Add a “Follow Us On Twitter: [Handle]” message to mailers, flyers, cash register receipts, coupons, marketing emails, email signatures and business cards. • Offer customers a one-time discount when they sign up as a follower. You can send this out as a direct message to new followers. You can also periodically send promotions or discount codes to all of your followers via a Tweet. • Become followers of other local businesses. Since users can see who follows who, Twitter can be a great word of mouth marketing tool. Use Twitter’s Find People tool here: http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter and Twitter Search here: http://search.twitter.com • Sign up your business at wefollow (http://wefollow.com/) and Twellow (http://www.twellow.com/), which is a Twitter directory listing for businesses.

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Best Practices What Not To Do: • Don’t make your business Twitter account too personal. Keep tweets professional and about your store, merchandise, promotions, etc. • Don’t tweet too much or tweet about irrelevant topics to your customers. If you tweet too often about things that aren’t relevant to your customers/followers, they will get frustrated and quickly un-follow you. We recommend tweeting no more than 10 times per week. • Don’t post personal information about yourself, customers or employees. • Don’t post anything negative or controversial. • Don’t forget to tweet often! Twitter works when your followers get a regular update of relevant information from you. If you only tweet once a month, followers will quickly forget about you. We recommend that you dedicate a little bit of time each day to monitor your account and send out tweets. If this isn’t possible, Twitter may not be a good addition to your marketing efforts. • Don’t ignore your followers. Twitter works best when you use it as a conversational tool. Chances are followers will have direct or indirect questions and comments that you can help with.

What To Do: • Make one person responsible for monitoring your Twitter account and sending out Tweets. By simply viewing http://www.twitter.com/handle you can monitor what is being posted and how often.

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• Listen to your customers. If you frequently have customers in the store asking about the availability of certain products or brands, update followers when those products or brands become available. • Post holiday hour changes. • Follow brand guidelines. Refer to the brand style guidelines and always follow them just as you would for any type of print advertising. For example, never refer to the brand name in all capital letters or abbreviate (MGR, OUAC, PIAS, PC). • When using brand names in tweets, use them only to describe the actual brand’s product and include “gently used” in front of the product name. • Be positive and avoid using terminology with negative connotations. • Share your expertise and offer relevant tips to your followers.

Examples of Tweets • Our Clearance Sale Begins the week of July 26! All summer items 75% off . • We are open July 4th from 10am - 5pm. Buy 4 clearance items and get 1 free! • Just took in a gently used Room and Board crib that converts to a toddler bed. Won’t last long! • This week only! All orange lined clearance is 50% off. Get it while it lasts! • Happy 4th of July!! Open today until 4:00. No Buying on the 4th. • Too hot outside? Too rainy? Stop in and pick out some movies for those indoor summer days. Most only $2.50 & $4.50. • Grab Bag sale is this weekend!! Stuff a bag (we provide) for only $10.00. © Winmark Corporation

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• All gently used strollers including a couple of jogging strollers are 15% off! • Play It Again Sports Downers Grove is on Twitter- Stop in say you saw us on Twitter and save an extra 5%! 1628 Odgen Ave. • We just got in all of our Boise River rafts. Mention you follow twitter and get a free set of oars with any raft purchase over $50.00. • We just put all of our pre-owned treadmills on sale. We currently have over 10 to choose from. Come in and save! • Brought in several teen sizes of gently used Abercrombie & Fitch clothes today. They will be out tomorrow, shop early for the best selection.

* If you need to include a website address in your Tweet, use a URL shortener in order to fit your message within the 140 character limit. A shortener will take a long link like http://www.playitagainsportslincoln.com and convert it to something shorter like http://tinyurl.com/n9dmnp leaving more room for additional text in your Tweet. There are several URL shorteners available. Here are a couple of options: • http://tinyurl.com • http://bit.ly

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