Tradesource

Chances are you’re signed up for Twitter and you use it occasionally but you wonder if it’s truly doing anything to help you and your business. Is there just too much noise on Twitter to make a difference? Are the masses really reading your tweets? For the longest time I really didn’t get the point of Twitter. I have followers, I follow people but truly, how am I supposed to keep up with the thousands – sometimes more – of tweets that come in on a daily basis?

If you spend even 30 minutes a day connecting with people – and on Twitter you can connect with high profile business people both in and outside of the trade industry. And he does his own tweets. Many high profile people actually do their own tweets and who knows, if you follow them maybe they will follow you. Regardless of how you think of twitter – micro-blogging or public instant messaging – you might want to get on board as it’s been reported that between 5,000 and 10,000 new people sign onto Twitter every day and it’s estimated that there are around 145 million users. Looking for potential business partners? There they are!

When you consider that with a tweet you are only allowed to write 140 characters, it’s much less daunting than having to do a blog post. Also, on Twitter, you can post as often as you want. Want to know what people are saying about any given topic: writing, music, social media? Go to Twitter Search and type in a keyword and search away.If you want to benefit from Twitter you need a plan. Here are a few steps to implement to make your Twitter time have value:

• Follow the “right” people. If you want to build a network of readers for your novel, follow people who read books, write reviews, etc. If you’re looking for experts in the IT field, follow IT company owners and computer gurus.
• Put together a plan for your tweet marketing. What categories can you tweet about to grow your business? Can you do a day of hints,  day of advice, a day of “follow these people,” inspiration quotes, useful resources, info about who you are and what you do. You get the picture.
• Be consistent
• Thank people who follow you
• Ask questions, ask for direct message responses, track the results
• Dread making cold calls on the telephone? Bypass that by following high profile people on Twitter and interacting with them there
• Retweet. Your followers appreciate it and they receive notification if you’ve retweeted – great way to build a relationship

Okay, so how do you keep up with all of it?

• Install TweetDeck and you can update and also see update streams from your various social media networks all in one place
• Consider scheduling your tweets and have them go live throughout the week by using TweetLater. Spend a day writing your weekly tweets then forget about them. Make certain you are still monitoring the tweets that come into your account on a daily basis though
•  If you’re on Facebook all day why not use the Twitter for Facebook app? With this app the updates you make to your Facebook account automatically post to your Twitter account.
• When you’re on LinkedIn and post a status update make certain you click the box to have that update post automatically to Twitter.

Yes, using Twitter is yet another step in your social media daily work but it is also another tool in your business-building arsenal.