Cyber Monday Tip #7: Twitter and Yahoo! Stores

Posted on November 19th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 7 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #7: You should be using Twitter with your Yahoo! Store

Twitter is one of those anomalies that amazes me. It’s a cool idea, but the fact that not seeing a twitter link on a major site these days is now considered strange amazes me. I can’t tell you if the twitter craze is going to be around even a year from now, but as I type, if you’re not on-board, you’re behind. If you’re not tweeting for your business yet, it’s not too late, start today!

The good news is that it’s really easy to get started. Just go to twitter.com and click JOIN. Takes a few seconds and you’re in. You can start tweeting right away. If you’re feeling creative, you can go into your settings and change your backgrounds, your icons and some of your “status” information.

Also, be sure to add a link to your twitter page from your Yahoo! Store. Typically the footer is the easiest place to add that. If you are not HTML savvy, here’s simple code you can add:

<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/YOURTWITTERID”>Follow us on Twitter</a>

So what should you be tweeting? What do people want to hear? It really depends on your customers, but one of the big trends I’ve seen starting to pop up are twitter exclusive deals. Usually in the form of a coupon. It’s a great way to track the use of your twitter posts as well! TIP: be sure to include an expiration date or time frame. Tweets don’t go away, they are there for all time in theory, so be sure to add stipulations.

Other things we’ve seen success with are new product or product line announcements, big sales on popular lines or categories, free shipping deals, overstock deals, product news releases and more.

Like I said, I can’t say that twitter is here to stay, but for now, use it. It’s a great tool. It’s been widely adopted and for the time being, it’s working.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with yet another tip for your Yahoo! Store. I think we’ll tackle your main category pages!