Awesome Way To Grow Your Business And Keep In Touch – Twitter!
To be honest I never thought much of Twitter when I first heard of it. Perhaps this is the case with you too, as I am certain it is with many people I know. I initially heard about it while visiting America in January. This was the time that Twitter was becoming a rage and though I never realized it, Twitter was all set to take over a very important process of online business promotion. Statistics of the site proved that over 10,000 Americans were joining the site daily. People all over were tweeting on their cell phones, and the net even the US President was making good use of this new system of networking!
This is when I decided to give it a try. In fact, I was trying to figure out, like many other businessmen, how I could use Twitter to help me with my business promotion and social networking.
I decided to have a go and shocked myself with the access I managed to get to some very high profile people. I learnt, with a great deal of excitement, that Twitter was a means for many very successful individuals to grow their businesses and their social network. Now I am a part of that band wagon and enjoying the fruits of “tweeting” to the world.
To begin with, let me explain what I discovered about this addictive service that has grown into the third largest social networking community on the net. Twitter is an internet instant messaging service, just like you are used to using on your cell phones. It allows you to send out instant messages containing a maximum of 140 characters. It is believed that the site is growing at the rate of 10 thousand new members each day and the total headcount presently is over 5 million. For businessmen and social networking people like me that spells a lot of opportunity.
When you post any updates on Twitter you are posting a “tweet” and you can post as often as you like just as long as your “tweets” are not more than 140 characters long. People who read your tweets are following you and when you read other twitters tweets you are following them. The idea of social networking through Twitter is to get as many people to follow you as you possibly can. You have to achieve this by getting them interested in your tweets and there are many ways to do this.
I arrived at the conclusion that there are three very good reasons to use Twitter. Firstly you get a lot of great replies and insight to your questions, secondly, you manage to get a lot of traffic to your site or blog, and thirdly, your followers spread your thoughts to places you never knew existed. Recently Business Week interviewed 18 CEOs and published how they were taking advantage of the vast reach that Twitter has to offer. The statistics revealed are amazing.
If you want to set up a marketing campaign using Twitter I suggest you set up a time-bound sales program. It is worth investing in a few weeks of “tweeting” as often as 5 times a day utilizing “TweetLater”. Make a list of categories, Tweet at different times of each day (Never at the same time each day), and use “BUDurls” to track results and tweak your tweet plan for the next marketing program.
Just remember that 90 percent of your tweets should consist of useful information about your business, services, and products and the remaining 10 percent should ask questions, like a survey of your customers, things you would like to know and improve upon. This is sure to get you more replies to your tweets than you expect.
Here are some Twitter tools to help you get on your way tweeting to glory. TwitterFox is a plugin for your browser and allows you to view tweets in a popup without having to go to Tweeter. TweetLater allows tweeters to schedule tweets. Use Tweetosphers to join conversations or track trends or topics. Post updates to all your social network sites such as Facebook and Linkedin in one go with Ping.fm.
So give Twitter a go and let us know what you think about the service I found to be fantastic for my networking needs. You can follow me on Twitter @bryanmarsh.
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