twitter-marketing

Twitter Marketing Complete Guide For Beginners

Twitter is usually known for short messaging, with a word limit of just 280 characters, Twitter asks you to be quick and effective in terms of communication. With around 321 million monthly active users Twitter can be a great source to create brand awareness. Indeed, as of today, Twitter is still among the most popular social news platforms.

In today’s digital age, your ability to get your company’s name out there is reliant on people’s perception of you. Social media now plays a massive part in that, and it can make or break a business, depending on how well people relate to you and the content you put out.

After all, unless you can provide a uniquely valuable experience for your readers and followers, chances are they won’t keep coming back. 

The key is to create the sort of content that provides value to those in your niche. This demonstrates your expertise on the topic and also builds goodwill with them, because you are providing them with something of value without asking much, if anything, in return.

So how can you create content that more people will be apt to find relatable and share with others? The following are some of the biggest and easiest tactics you can utilize to quickly improve your company’s online reputation and get more followers on social media.

Provide Value

The amount of value you provide is one of the most important factors in the online community’s perception of your business. When you don’t create content that people find valuable, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to see long-term growth.

The reputation your business has for competence is tied to everything that you do and everything that people do with your business.

Because of this, it’s also unlikely that your word of mouth marketing will be successful, which will inevitably mean fewer eyes on the products and services you provide, fewer clients, and less revenue.

The most valuable type of content will differ depending on your target audience. To determine what your ideal followers would view most positively, it’s important to get to know them.

This can be done with things like online polls, a look at your competitors’ content, and the most frequently asked questions in your sales cycle.

All of these can give significant insight into your target audience and help you build up the number of followers on your social media channels.

Even better, employing tactics like these are free, which means it costs you nothing to distribute content that can get you more followers on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even YouTube.

Don’t Buy Followers

No matter what you do, DON’T buy followers. This is a bad idea for many reasons, but there are two major ones.

First, it perpetuates the idea that your company is inauthentic. This is because most, if not all, of the followers you buy will be fake accounts, not real people, meaning your business couldn’t bring in that number on its own.

And although your new high follower count may seem great at first, it would have long-term consequences for both your company’s reputation and its ability to bring in revenue.

People don’t want to invest in inauthentic businesses that do shady practices, and your goal as a company should be to build trust, NOT destroy it. And of course, buying followers is against Twitter’s terms of service, meaning you run the risk of having your account banned. 

It’s not a One Way Road

Whenever you’re trying to grow your Twitter following, remember it isn’t a one-way road. Just as much as you want to speak to your audience, they want to speak to you. Thankfully, there are all sorts of helpful tools you can use to get this done.

There are all sorts of different ways you can use polls on Twitter to provide valuable insights and interactivity not only to your audience but for your own business as well. 

There are other ways to include your follower’s voices in the conversation as well. Anytime you have an in-person event or something like a webinar, you can invite them to tweet about it, perhaps even starting a hashtag that can get others involved – and thus earn you even more followers.

This kind of interactivity is critical to success on Twitter. While some people may like a lecture, most don’t. It is good to remember that Twitter is not a college classroom.

While everyone might be here to learn something, they want it to be in the sort of environment where they can openly and easily express their own opinions on things.

Be Patient

Putting all of these tactics into practice can have a huge impact on your follower count and long-term growth potential.

Some will take effect immediately, but not all of the results will be fast and easy. It takes patience and consistency to grow your social media following, no matter which platform you choose to target. 

This patience will be rewarded in the long run when your Twitter following really starts to build upon itself. It will be one of the most valuable marketing tools for your brand, and best of all, it can be completely free.

This will be the reward that your business reaps for putting in the hours and the investment to grow an organic Twitter following. Whatever you do, just don’t try to shortcut the process, as this will inevitably backfire. What are you waiting for, go forth and market!

How can you create a Marketing Strategy for Twitter? 

A Twitter marketing strategy may be a plan centered around creating, publishing, and distributing content for your buyer personas, audience, and followers through the social media platform. The goal of this sort of strategy is to draw in new followers and leads, boost conversions, improve brand recognition, and increase sales.

Creating a Twitter marketing strategy would require you to follow the equivalent steps and strategies you’d if you were creating the other social media marketing strategy. As we discussed the Buyer persona, remember? You need to create one. And when you have found the Consumer persona, you should be then moving ahead to generate content that is engaging, educative, informative, entertaining, etc. do what suits your business theme. You can then schedule your posts on Twitter using the Social Media scheduling platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer, Later, etc. 

The easiest way of creating a brand image and marketing on Twitter is to create a proper profile with all legit details;

Creating a Business Profile on Twitter

You might have heard the sentence, the first impression is the last, so whenever a person hops on to your profile, the look and feel of the profile will matter the most. So, create subtle art on your profile and never leave any gaps of doubt. The user who visited your profile should immediately get to know that this profile and this business is legitimate one.

Elements of a Twitter Business Profile

Twitter handle/Username on Twitter

 Now, this is often your account name, and it’s how audiences can find you on Twitter. Generally, you would like your handles to be consistent across social media and include your name.

Profile Picture 

Your profile photo appears next to each tweet you send, so you would like it to seem sharp. Use your logo or wordmark, and confirm to use the proper dimensions for a transparent and crisp image.

Cover photo/Header image

Your header image appears on your profile page, and you’ll want to update it more often than your profile photo. It can reflect current campaigns, provide information, or offer insight into your company culture.

Bio

The most important element of a Twitter Profile is the Bio it has. The Bio should be clean, short, and to the point. In the above example, the Bio is very short and we feel it is very short, just to the point, with no other information.

Now, check this profile which has a clean Bio, it gives a humorous and funny notion to the reader, hence it will get more engagement.

URL

You can add your company’s website, a link for special offers, events, etc. you should never leave this section empty. The profile with proper details will always get more traction and engagement than any other profile. 

Use Twitter polls for Marketing of your Business

Polls are famous everywhere, on Instagram, on YouTube, on Twitter too. It gives a sense of understanding to you and people are always happy to give their opinion about something. Polls have a lot of benefits associated with them and a few of them are;

  • They can help you to find out what your customer wants
  • They can help you understand the content to be posted
  • You can find your consumer’s opinion
  • Acts as a part of the research

Use the right set of Hashtags

Twitter was the one to start the trend of Hashtags and it remains to stay number one in that genre. Hashtags are a very valuable asset for the marketing and growth of any profile and to your business too. Twitter hashtags will always support you to boost your tweets and give you an exponentially increasing engagement. Ever seen when the trending news and gossips get a hashtag and when the normal Twitter users make use of these hashtags in their tweets, the algorithm supports them and they are ranked in a higher position.

So after thorough research of Hashtags on Twitter, you can make use of them and even ask your followers and prospective consumers to use it in their tweets

Run Ads on Twitter

So running Advertisement campaigns on Twitter is a bit different than all the other platforms, it has various types of Ad campaigns;

Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets look tons like regular Tweets. What’s different is that an advertiser is paying to display the content to people that aren’t already following that advertiser on Twitter. Like ordinary Tweets, they will be liked, retweeted, and commented on. But they’re labeled as an ad: they’re going to always say “Promoted” within the lower left-hand corner. Promoted Tweets also can contain video and can autoplay in users’ timelines. If the video is a smaller amount than 60 seconds, then the video loops.

Promoted Accounts

Instead of promoting only one Tweet, this sort of Twitter ad allows you to market your brand’s entire Twitter account. It targets users who don’t already follow your brand and may help grow your business’s Twitter following. Promoted Accounts can be seen in potential followers’ timelines. The ad also will show within the Who to Follow suggestions and in search results.

Promoted Trends

Twitter’s trending topics may be a high-turnover list on Twitter’s right-hand side. this is often a set of the foremost popular topics and hashtags getting used in real-time. Users can interact with a Promoted Trend within the same way they’d interact with the other trending topic. What’s different is that the spot a brand purchases will display as ‘Promoted’ for targeted users. A Promoted Trend also will show together of the primary spots under the “Trends for you” section, both within the Explore tab and within the timeline. When users click on the Promoted Trend, they’re going to see search results for that topic with a promoted Tweet from your brand at the highest.

Promoted Moments

Think of Promoted Moments as Twitter story ads. Twitter Moments are often created on the desktop and are a curated collection of comparable Tweets that tell a story. This format means your brand also can share Twitter story ads that are longer than 280 characters.

Running Ad campaigns

Just similar to Facebook Ads Manager, Twitter also has an Ads Manager. Which can be accessed at https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/twitter-ads-manager.html

Choose a goal for the Ad campaign

Twitter lets you choose the goal that you have in your mind. It can be the advertisement for;

Awareness

Has two options Reach: which charges you according to CPM that is the cost per one thousand impressions, and Instream Video Views: You can run ads at the start of video available on the platform just like YouTube, you will be asked to pay for each video view.

Conversion

(Image Source: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/twitter-ads-manager.html)

App re-engagements: Here you will be charged for each click user makes. If you want your app user to again open the app and use it, you can select this goal. 

Consideration
  • Video views: you would like people to observe your videos or GIFs. You’re billed for every video view.
  • App installs: you would like people to put in your app. You’re billed for every app install.
  • Website clicks or conversions: you would like people to travel to your website. You’re billed per click.
  • Engagements: you would like to maximize engagement together with your Promoted Tweets. You will be charged as per the engagement but only on the initial engagement.
  • Followers: you would like to create your Twitter audience. You’re billed for every new follower.

Set up a Campaign

(Image Source: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/twitter-ads-manager.html)

You can set up the Ad name, timing, ad budget, and bidding type here.

Audience Targeting

According to the Demographics, language, etc. you can target them.

Choose the placement of your Ad

Just like Facebook and Instagram and Google gives you options to place ads, on Twitter you can do the same. 

Finally, now you can launch your Ad Campaign and also keep a check on your analytics. 

Read More: Twitter Business Model, Quora Business ModelContent MarketingMarketing Strategy, Quora Marketing.

Visual Marketing Glossary

Account-Based Marketing

account-based-marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.

Ad-Ops

ad-ops
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.

AARRR Funnel

pirate-metrics
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.

Affinity Marketing

affinity-marketing
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.

Ambush Marketing

ambush-marketing
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.

Affiliate Marketing

affiliate-marketing
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.

Bullseye Framework

bullseye-framework
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.

Brand Building

brand-building
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.

Brand Dilution

brand-dilution
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset. 

Brand Essence Wheel

brand-essence-wheel
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.

Brand Equity

what-is-brand-equity
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.

Brand Positioning

brand-positioning
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.

Business Storytelling

business-storytelling
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.

Content Marketing

content-marketing
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.

Customer Lifetime Value

customer-lifetime-value
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.

Customer Segmentation

customer-segmentation
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.

Developer Marketing

developer-marketing
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.

Digital Marketing Channels

digital-marketing-channels
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.

Field Marketing

field-marketing
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.

Funnel Marketing

funnel-marketing
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond. Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.

Go-To-Market Strategy

go-to-market-strategy
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.

Greenwashing

greenwashing
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.

Grassroots Marketing

grassroots-marketing
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.

Growth Marketing

growth-marketing
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.

Guerrilla Marketing

guerrilla-marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.

Hunger Marketing

hunger-marketing
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.

Integrated Communication

integrated-marketing-communication
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.

Inbound Marketing

inbound-marketing
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.

Integrated Marketing

integrated-marketing
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.

Marketing Mix

marketing-mix
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.

Marketing Myopia

marketing-myopia
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.

Marketing Personas

marketing-personas
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.

Meme Marketing

meme-marketing
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Microtargeting

microtargeting
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.

Multi-Channel Marketing

multichannel-marketing
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.

Multi-Level Marketing

multilevel-marketing
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.

Net Promoter Score

net-promoter-score
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.

Neuromarketing

neuromarketing
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data. Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.

Newsjacking

newsjacking
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.

Niche Marketing

microniche
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.

Push vs. Pull Marketing

push-vs-pull-marketing
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.

Real-Time Marketing

real-time-marketing
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.

Relationship Marketing

relationship-marketing
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.

Reverse Marketing

reverse-marketing
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.

Remarketing

remarketing
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.

Sensory Marketing

sensory-marketing
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.

Services Marketing

services-marketing
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.

Sustainable Marketing

sustainable-marketing-green-marketing
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

word-of-mouth-marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.

360 Marketing

360-marketing
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.

Read more:

Read also:

About The Author

Scroll to Top
FourWeekMBA