Building Business with Twitter
Twitter is one of the fastest growing communities on the Internet today. It is also one of the easiest communities to plug into. Although you are limited to a maximum of 140 characters per message, you can do much within the limit. Although you have to keep the messages short and sweet, Twitter is a great tool for people who value their time.
The next questions are how exactly do you grow and network on Twitter? And how do you monetize that network? How do you build business with Twitter? Let’s start first with how to grow your Twitter network.
First let’s approach it in the simplest way possible. We should not make networking more complicated than it needs to be. Networking is simply a way of making contact with a lot of people who want to exchange information with each other. The main point here is the word “exchange”. It is a social process. Therefore the term “social networking” is used for services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.
On the other hand, we can think of social networking sites as places where people gather and meet each other. It is as if you were at a cafe, pub, bar, at someone’s party or at some public places. When you attend a party, normally you do not take a megaphone and shout at everybody to come and visit your shop. Instead, you get to know each other, ask questions, share information, and perhaps exchange business cards.
Doing business at the party should not be our immediate aim of attending. Your first aim should be to make a good impression on the people you meet. When people show interest, you will then explain what you do. The people may possible recommend you to someone in their network at later day due to the good impression.
What you should do at social networking like Twitter.com is very similar to what you would do at a party illustrated above. The business card equivalent of real life is your profile page. You should post some information about yourself and what you do, and include a link back to your website. Make the content as interesting as possible for people to read.
Your post is called tweet. It is both a noun and averb. When you post tweets or when you tweet (as it is commonly called), do not make a blatant advertisement for your affiliate marketing program. You will create a very bad impression. Instead, give out and share some useful tips, some interesting insights and some daily activities related to your specialty. Being helpful, generous and nice are viewed very positively. When people have good impression of you, nobody will object to your posting a promotional link in the future.
Don’t feel that you have too tweet only about your business. Please remember that when you are at social function, you don’t want to perpetually talk about business. You will also talk about other topics of interest. Internet marketing, especially social networking and social marketing, is all about building a brand around a personality. We are referring to YOU.
The best way to the branding is not to focus on yourself only all the time. It is also about other people. If you are at a party, you would do that by going around mingling with other people. It is the same on Twitter. You do it by following other people (as it is called in Twitter’s world). Following others is the key to building your network on Twitter. The more you follow, the more you will be followed. In fact, your friends in Twitter are your followers. So who do you follow and who are your followers?
1. Follow people who are entertaining, who share information and who link out to interesting websites. Even if their network is not big, it is likely to grow in the future due to the positive attributes we discussed above. You will want to be able to plug into it.
2. Follow people who follow people. At the top of every Twitter page you will find information about the number of followers and the number of people being followed. Personally I try not to follow people who have a much larger number of followers than the people they follow. These people are kind of stingy and are unlikely to reciprocate when you follow them. Of course there are exceptions to this for example the news twitters, etc.
3. Find people via Twitter search box. You can search for people by entering keywords related to your area of interest or field of expertise. You will be able to build up a solid network of people who may be interested in what you have to offer.
4. Use a service such as Twitter Grader which will generate a list of people whose profiles or areas of interest seemed to be similar to yours. See my ranking at Twitter Grader.
5. Check out the people who are following the people you are following. Then you can click and follow all the people who appeal to you on the list.
6. Check out the people who are following your followers. You can click and follow all who appeal to you.
Interestingly, you will find that many of the people you follow will be happy to reciprocate and follow you. It pays to actively follow as many people as possible. At the end of the day, you will be able to build up a large network quickly and efficiently – and most importantly have fun at the same time.
Happy Twittering!
