Twitter has become one of the most popular social networking and communications tools on the web. The first thing I did, even before I bought the domain name, “AllWhiteKicks” was to make sure the Twitter handle (i.e. twitter.com/allwhitekicks) was open. Call me crazy, but I refused to purchase a domain name if I could not also get the same handle on Twitter. Once I secured my Twitter handle, I decided to refrain myself from falling into the trap of  following other people and posting blurbs about white sneakers.  I knew the urban hipster market I was aiming to attract would not respond well to commercial tweets or forced messaging. I needed to stay genuine and be real with my audience in order to gain their trust and admiration. I remembered a quote in an article from Advertising Age that read, “By now it’s a widely accepted marketing maxim that a brand isn’t simply what its marketing department says it is but what its customers say it is… And listening to what consumers are saying and distilling the most important information into useful business insights is an area in which most marketers rely on a fast-growing group of outside vendors for help (via Adage).” After reading this quote I came to the conclusion that I was going to establish boundaries and rules for myself while using Twitter and marketing AllWhiteKicks.com.

Cutler’s Rule of 4

1. Listen – I decided to use Twitter as a monitoring tool to see what was being said about my brand, industry and competitors.
2. Interact- My goal was to listen and then respond opposed to acting and then listening – or doing both at the same time.
3. Followers – Significantly increasing the number of followers did not so much matter to me. I was more concerned with the quality of followers. Although AllWhiteKicks.com was a B2C brand, I was going to solely use this channel to garner the attention of large sneaker brands and industry influencers.
4. Relevance – I came up with a five-tiered system that allowed me to statistically measure users I should continue to follow and others I should dismiss

My Approach Into The Sneaker Market

After setting up my website and populating it with content, I decided to pick the top five companies I wanted to interact with on Twitter. The idea was that by associating with larger more established brand names on Twitter I could also grow my brand. Again, I was not going to worry about how many followers I had. To me, Twitter is another formalized vehicle for communicating with other brands, blogs and influencers.  For the sake of keeping this post short, let’s examine one of the wins I am most proud of. adidas Originals is arguably one of the best in the business when it comes to marketing. They are incredibly good at attracting early adopters and influential trend setters in the space. Not to mention their laundry list of amazing products that are popular worldwide. My number one goal was to do everything in my power to gain the attention of adidas Originals. They have over three million fans on Facebook and over 25,000 followers on Twitter – numbers that are growing every single day. Every time I made a post on AllWhiteKicks.com about adidas Originals, I also tweeted at their handle (@ Twitter.com/adi_originals) with the hopes of them retweeting my post to their audience. I also monitored and listened to what they were tweeting, making sure to interact with them if the right opportunity arose. Granted, the fact they have dozens of awesome white sneakers meant that I was interacting a lot.

A Great Day For AllWhiteKicks.com

I woke up one morning and like usual checked to make sure my blog was up and running and that I did not miss any breaking industry news or events. Much to my surprise I found…

AllWhiteKicks.com was being followed by one of the most influential sneaker brands in the world – adidas Originals. Why was this such a big deal? Because adidas Originals does not follow a lot of people. It seems as though they only follow those people on Twitter that they deem to be trendsetters or influential to the space, Snoop Dogg and Ciara for example. Even today if you visit http://www.twitter.com/adi_originals they only follow 45 people. I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see the AllWhiteKicks.com profile picture next to Snoop Dogg and Ciara, both of whom work with adidas Originals to promote their brand. Our differentiator of being the only dedicated white sneaker blog translated into a coolness factor that adidas Originals understood. Of course, I did what any entrepreneur would do and followed up with a DM (Direct Message) to see if I could connect with someone in their marketing department. Within minutes I had a response back from a senior marketer at adidas Originals and we arranged a call for the following week. Although nothing gigantic has yet to transpire from our relationship, AllWhiteKicks.com is now deemed as “cool” by a leading brand in the sneaker industry. And to me that was a huge win!

I snapped a picture of my adidas Originals hat and put it on TweetPhoto. adidas Originals voted for my picture and shared it with their followers

The Power Of Twitter Is What You Make It

The power of twitter is exactly what you make of it. For me the amount of followers simply did not matter. I knew that I had a neat concept and that if I outreached in the right ways to large brands my followers would come by way of association. By implementing this strategy I also cut down on the amount of irrelevant followers. Since AllWhiteKicks.com is so niche and the uber hip audience is hard to adopt I needed to make sure that everyone following AllWhiteKicks.com fit the right criteria. Remember that the beauty of social media is that you get to see who your audience is. If you are running a campaign or have goals set, but it looks like you are attracting the wrong audience – that probably means your strategy is off.

When using Twitter I recommend thinking before you act. What are your main goals? Who is your audience? What message do you want to portray? Where do you want to direct your audience to from Twitter? Who do you want to associate with on Twitter? And so on. Don’t forget to set your rules and metrics before hand so you can measure your marketing effectiveness. I have heard a lot of people suggest to brands and people that they should just dive right into the conversation. I  could not disagree more with that approach. I say figure out what you want to accomplish first and then go execute upon those goals.

These are some of the steps that have worked for me. I have spoken to dozens of world wide brands and reporters about AllWhiteKicks.com and have built it up to be a top 1 million media property with little to no capital invested. These are just some suggestions and thoughts to consider while your building your go to market strategy using Twitter.