Twitter is big news. Unless you’ve been in hiding for the last 2 or 3 years, you’ve probably heard of Twitter one way or another.Whether it’s footballers expressing their dissatisfaction at being dropped from the team, or celebrities like Stephen Fry documenting their everyday lives, much has been written about this latest social media craze.
As with anything that pervades our culture so quickly, before long there were experts telling you that you must be on it and you can make a lot of money out of it. And many people are still wondering “…but how?…”.
I’m experienced in internet marketing, but when it comes to Twitter I’m a dabbler, not an expert. I’ve spent some time on Twitter over the past six months to see what it can do for my business, and I think I can confidently say you should read the rest of this post to see what it might do for you. It definitely deserves some consideration and an open mind.
Twitter won’t redefine your business overnight, and it won’t replace all your other marketing activity either. For the right businesses though, a little bit of time spent on Twitter could be time well spent.
Here’s some of what Twitter can do for you:
Find people talking about what you offer.
Rather than viewing people’s tweets through the Twitter website I prefer to use TweetDeck. Using TweetDeck you can search for specific words and phrases much like you can with a search engine. Only with Twitter you get to see not just search results, but you get to see people’s actual conversations in real time. So you get to see what they are saying about your product or service, the words that they use and all sorts of other useful information that can help with your marketing.
Give you information that helps you run your business.
You might, like me, be a consultant and want to keep up to date with new developments within your profession. On Twitter I’ve managed to find and follow a number of experts in internet marketing and this helps me to keep my knowledge currentand ultimately provide a better service. So it’s not all just aboutfinding customers, it can be about improving your business and developing your skills too.
Get your message out there more widely.
If you’ve got a great offer or sales message on your website or even if you just want to publicise a free newsletter on your site, Twitter gives you another way to get the message out there. A quick tweet with a link to the relevant area of your website doesn’t take a great deal of effort and helps you build a following. Remember to use your main keywords in your tweets and not only will your followers see your tweets but they may attract the attention of other users searching for tweets on your specific subject.
Let you track your competitors.
If Twitter can be effective for your business, the chances are that you may have competitors who’ve got there before you. Twitter is a very transparent service so if a competitor is on there, you can see how many followers they have, and their recent tweets. You can also follow them and see their subsequent tweets, and of course most will link to specific areas of their website. Twitter is one of the first tools that allows you to jump right in to the middle of the conversations that your competitors are having with complete strangers.
So, if acheiving any of these things could help you run your business better, it could be worth you too having a dabble with Twitter. I highly recommend TweetDeck as the best way to find your way around Twitter – it’s free to download, and it’s really easy to use too, with a simple interface involving columns. There’s even an iPhone version that lets you use Twitter on the move.
If you’ve been wondering about Twitter, my advice is to give it a go. Spend no more than half an hour a day on Twitter for a couple of weeks, and you’ll soon have an idea of whether or not it’s going to do anything to boost your business. You have nothing to lose other than a bit of your time.
{ 0 comments }
