Twitter for Business

Like so many, I am relatively new to the world of Twitter. Before signing up though I wanted to know “if anyone has received business from Twitter.” I posted that question on various sites to see what others experience has been. The general consensus was that no one has received business (directly) from Twitter. So if you are looking to get more business from a new source, you will have to look elsewhere.

That being said, if you are looking for a tool to get the word out about your company, your product or your service, Twitter is IT! Twitter is a great way to talk about what is important in your area of specialty. It also makes you think, because you have to use smaller phrases and words that will entice your follows to read what you write and hopefully re-tweet your tweet.

So what are things that will interest your followers and help you get results? Notice the fine print—get you results! Whether you advertise, use social media or network the goal for any of that is to drive business results. So what are you looking to get out of Twitter? That will drive how you tweet. Do you want to increase visibility, have someone read that blog you spend all that time posting to, or drive people to your website because your conversion rate once they are there will take care of the rest? How about practice conveying value to prospects or the idea you had for an article but forget where you were going with it? Twitter is great for all of those things.

Like anything else out there, Twitter has a learning curve. There are a ton of acronyms, it makes you aware of the length of your URLs and you cannot assume that your followers will read every message you tweet. Because of this, your messages have to be true to your brand, but simple enough that they make sense individually.

Another thing to take into account is mixing business and personal. If your objective is to use Twitter as a business tool, then leave off the comments about how you are working in bed, eating a jelly donut, or just got over a cold—we don’t care and you really are not that important. So get over yourself!

Ahh I forgot to mention the challenge in being able to tweet 24/7. Like you, I have other things I need to do. Therefore, tweeting live is not always an option. A great tool to assist you with your tweeting is TweetLater.com. You create an account with them and can schedule ahead of time your tweets. How wonderful is that? TweetLater gives me the benefits of tweeting, but still allows me to get the real work done that I need to.

So take the good with the bad and make the most of the service. There is a lot of talk about changes that Twitter may be making in the future. We will see. For me they sound good, so I am looking forward to them. Follow me @MelDePaoli.



Update: My preferred tool is www.HootSuite.com to assist you with tweeting and managing your social media accounts.

You can also follow me @MelDePaoli or @Omicle