Twitter Tips for Business
I was asked in the Bloggers community to give some tips on Twitter for Business.
As my earlier post claims I love Twitter. It is a great tool for business that I use in my day job as well as for my husband's business which I am very involved in.
Here are 4 ways Twitter can help with business:
1) Competition: You can keep an eye on competitors, what offers they are giving and new products they are putting out there.
2) Potential Customers: You can learn a lot about potential customers, their likes, their dislikes and the places they buy from now.
3) Networking: It's Social, Social, Social. It is like going to an after hours Networking Event. There are people you'll gravitate to more than others. Don't worry about it. Just get to the party and the rest will happen.
4) Leads: You can use hashtags in searches for leads in your niche.
A hashtag is the number sign (#) before words. For example on Friday a popular one is #followfriday or #FF. You can search for topics by hash tags in the Twitter Search field at the top of your Twitter page.
Next you can follow people with similar interests. Search for the interests again in the search. Once you start following a few people, Twitter will recommend some similar tweeps for you to follow. Check them out.
Now once you start tweeting your info; other on Twitter will love it if you can re-tweet their stuff and converse with them. You'll see you'll get many more followers that way.
A great way to learn more is to sign up for Nutshell Mail. You can get daily email updates on who is following you and who has stopped following you. You can then un-follow them directly from the email. It also gives you info on your Facebook account too.
This is a great FREE tool.
They are many more tools available out there that will post your tweets for you during the day - I find I like to be in real time and have not it done on automation. For a while I linked one Twitter account to LinkedIn but I didn't want all my tweets to fill the LinkedIn feed with "Thanks for the RT" (re-tweet). So if it's something special I just hit the LinkedIn button to share. (More on LinkedIn to come).
Twitter is great on a smart phone too. Droid has a wonderful app for Twitter
and another one I love is Tweetcaster. I have several accounts on my Tweetcaster to stay on top of them anytime or anywhere. You must also download the re-tweet tool - that is an important one for who doesn't like to have their tweets re-tweeted?
If you are not using Twitter for business you are missing out on a great FREE tool.
