What is Twitter and How Does it Work for Your Business?
Yesterday, Twitter announced 2 billion tweets per month. That’s a far cry from just one year ago, when I started tweeting. At first, I wasn’t interested at all in Twitter. I had a business page on Facebook and a lot of valuable relationships. I liked where I got my news, worshipped my iPhone, and really didn’t have time for something else while I was building my business. What I’ve learned is Twitter takes time, but gives me more relevant information from multiple sources that I could ever get through Facebook, ANY other social media, or even several news sources combined. Most importantly, I learn more about my own industry and what’s happening as it happens, something I REALLY had no time for before. I’ll discuss the main areas where I’ve found real value in building my business.
What Twitter IS is a quick, convenient forum to answer the question “What are you doing” in 140 characters or less. I would actually suggest answering “What has your attention” instead. I would also suggest 120 characters so folks can re-tweet what you’ve posted as well.
When I first started, it was with a personal account @dcontois, and now I’ve actually added @BSGrp for the business itself. I thought it was important in terms of branding the business. Finding the right balance between interesting business tidbits while letting my personality through is the line I’m trying to walk. I don’t have all the answers here, but I am willing to share some of the things I’ve learned. More to come as I learn…
Please retweet
This was a great book I read to get started. @Dom helped create Twitter and has a very straightforward approach on what Twitter is and how it works. Even if you’re familiar and just want to expand your knowledge, it’s an easy and informative read. This work exists to document and standardize this new language as a short form of communication. The short form can be comedic, dramatic, momentary, or timeless.
One of the most interesting things I learned from the book was if 120 is the new 140, 100 is the new 120. This allows you and another person to get the mention. Please retweet. These two words will get you picked up by retweet-bots, and your message will automatically be re-transmitted by them. A transparent trick, but the principle is sound: Be polite, and do not demand attention, but request it.
What is Twitter and how does it work for your business?
1. Connect with thought leaders in your industry to learn new trends
2. Keep abreast of news AS IT HAPPENS
3. Find work by people and organizations posting either personnel or job needs
4. Talk about non-business too, making you more multi-dimensional than just your business profile
5. Share links to neat things in your community, providing info for other folks in your locale
6. Make your tweets useful, by giving advice, blog posts and pictures. People will be more apt to follow you when they can learn something
7. Ask questions – Twitter is great for getting opinions (which can help get client feedback on issues)
8. As long as you do more than promote your business, you’re more apt to get followers who find value in the relationship
9. Follow and interact with people you respect, which gets you in front of high profile people
10. Offer interesting links, respond to tweets and post your thoughts at least a few times a day (you can schedule them with Hootsuite or TweetDeck)
11. Twitter allows you to build your brand, either personally or for your business (or like me, with both)
12. Tweet job postings, or ask for recommendations
13. Notify your customers when you have news, a new product launch or client
14. Twitter works by finding potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.
15. Twitter can help increase your search engine ranking. My tweets are posted to the home page of BluSkyeGroup.com, and I consistently get Google Alerts that my tweet has been found on Google (usually within a day).
What is Twitter and how does it work? That is how it continues to work for me. What experiences have you had? Have some things worked better than others? If you haven’t yet, build an account and start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space (listening always comes first). Let Twitter work for you.
David Contois is a marketing consultant and graphic designer in San Diego. You can learn more about marketing your business, graphic design, web design, social media and search engine optimization by subscribing to our RSS feed here. David can also be followed on Twitter @BSGrp or @dcontois and on Facebook.com/BluSkyeGroup.
Tags: does twitter work, twitter works, What is twitter and how does it work for your business
posted on Monday, September 20th, 2010 at 8:09 am filed under Small Business, Social Media, Twitter.follow any responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
