I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on how to use Twitter to help your business grow.
GIVE, WITHOUT ASKING WHAT YOU CAN GET
Twitter is great for conversation. The conversation will help you to get information and give information.
When you just want to blurt out your company news, new blog posts, and tell about incoming products without answering to people and talking to them – this is no conversation. This is twitter-advertising, and yes, you will get your twitter-ads out there and make a few sales, but in the long run – it won’t make your business grow. People might listen for a while, then you will just become background noise. Well, unless you are a Superstar and people would pay for the information you are giving them on Twitter.
Give information, help others. Yes, show your knowledge in your field and be an expert, but be helpful even when someone is looking for a great sandwich shop in your neighborhood and you happen to know one. There really is such a thing as Twitter-karma. You help people and they will help you.
Don’t think Twitter as a tool, think of it as a Community of People.
These people are or could be your customers, your business partners, your suppliers, your retailers. They are all there. It’s up to you how you want to reach these people.
Just remember one thing – companies don’t do business with other companies. Am I crazy? No, think of it this way: it’s always a Person in a company doing business with a Person in another company, and ultimately those personal relationships with people will carry weight in our business decisions even if we didn’t want to. Frankly, do you want to do business with people you don’t like?
Most of our companies have competitors, and you need to give people a reason why they come to you instead of going to your competitor. I know you have many of these reasons from better service or product to shipping and payment terms, or anything else. But you can be one of these reasons too. You personally are your business and can give the best reason for someone to do business with your company – so they can deal with you! Show that personality of yours – show it at Twitter.
SHOW THEM THE BUSINESS
To be honest, for some of us it is easier to join the conversation without even talking about our businesses. Well, you can be the most popular gal at Twitter, and have great conversations but if you don’t show your business – don’t expect your business to grow.
In the past two weeks many Twitter friends who are business owners have contacted me asking help with their business – and I’ve been surprised. I’ve known about your mother’s surgery (not a real example), but not that you even had a business!
You need to do these twitter ads, shameless self plugs, and engage and give people a reason to get to know your business. You need to tell them what you got!
The art of course is finding harmony between giving people information and not just spamming them with your ads. According to the guidelines on http://dominatewithseo.com, you should do product updates, tell your ongoing sales or specials, share the great news, and ask help with not so great news or anything else. Just don’t do it too much.
It feels too simple even to say, but if there is no talk about your business at Twitter – Twitter is not likely to make it grow. You need to be the person to start the talk about your business if nobody else has done it yet.
WAYS TO USE TWITTER
Surveys
Twitter is a whole new way to find your customers and their specific needs – follow people who you think might be in your target market, and just get to know them. The better you know your target market, the better you can serve it. When you have reached a certain number of followers in your target market, Twitter is a great way to ask directly from them, what they need, and how you can make your product/service better. An amazing way to do surveys – in real-time, and get more specified answers than just “yes” or “no”.
Customer Service
Your customers can reach you via Twitter and you can help them in their buying decision or tell more about your product. It’s way easier than getting the phone and calling, and it also seems less formal – the customer is more likely to send a quick tweet question than calling.
Advertising
Like mentioned before – the 140 character blurps are a great way to remind what your business does. Best if you just do it in one tweet, but never more than two or three tweets, then it really goes overboard, and you should have just done a blog post and tweeted a link.
Twitter-Giveaways
Works like blog giveaways – giving promotional freebies to your followers. Zappos is the king in this – follow him, you might win some shoes while you’ll learn how to do this.
Press Releases -> Viral Marketing
While 140 characters is short, you can get your news out fast, and even ask other people, your customers, suppliers, retailers, and even bloggers to spread the word for you. Look at my right side-bar – see all those links? I had some great news a few weeks ago, I let all my Twitter-friends know about it, and many of them blogged about it. Now I have national and international press contacting me – and I haven’t even written an official press release yet. The word just got out – via Twitter.
AND TO BE CONTINUED…
My experiment with Twitter is still young, and these are my first couple of months’ observations, written while on vacation. I am sure I will be revising this million times – but we all need to start somewhere, and hopefully these tips will help you to get started too.
Follow me on twitter – I’m @katjapresnal – looking forward to helping you to spread the word of your business!
