From August –November of 2009 I made blog posts http://budurl.com/websiteblog on how to use Twitter in your small business. The following are my top ten tips. They are based on my experiences with Twitter along with suggestions from others who made Twitter a successful tool for their small businesses.
1. Twitter is your digital network. Use the same skills you employ with a physical networking group on your Twitter digital network. Check out these 9 networking skills. http://budurl.com/7bzk
2. Create your own Twitter agenda. What do you want to get accomplished with your Twitter site? Business exposure, brand development, locating potential customers, building relationships, connecting with experts, finding answers to problems? Stick to your agenda! Don’t spend time on activities that don’t support your agenda.
3, Your Twitter Bio is your brand statement–the most important part of your Twitter profile. State what you do and why people should follow you. See Twitter Profile worksheet.http://budurl.com/gwzw.
Customize your Twitter background—many free programs to help you.http://budurl.com/37q6
4. Don’t get caught up in the numbers. It’s more important to strive for 500 quality followers who want to listen to you than thousands of followers in name only. http://budurl.com/zfp9
5. Who should you follow? Be selective about who you follow. Do not follow or accept others randomly. Use your agenda to decide who you want to follow. You can use free tools like http://budurl.com/uyyw or
http://budurl.com/xfqn to help you find the right followers support your agenda.
6. It’s not who you follow but who follows them. Want to broader your followers? Click on one of your key followers and see who is following them. Then click on their followers. Check out their bio’s and see which ones fit your agenda. Then follow them. Don’t overlook this powerful tool in Twitter. http://budurl.com/7cyt
7. What should you Tweet about? Share things, ask questions, offer advise, share other resources, responding to issues, retweet Tweets from others, identify with people’s pain, share some mundane personal items, offer freebies are all good content to include in your Tweets. Use a variety of different Tweets.
8. Twitter is real time. Unlike blogs, there is no Twitter archive. The negative side is a Tweet has a shelf live about one hour in the Twitter stream. The positive side is that like a TV station that shows reruns, you can use your best tweets over and over again every 3-4 weeks. http://budurl.com/lgza
9. Schedule your tweets. You have a variety of free schedulers to use in scheduling your Tweets. I created about 6 “tweet sets” (a set of 12-15 individual quality Tweets about a topic.) I then use the scheduler to schedule them two-four hours apart on a given day. In ten minutes I have made my presence on Twitter while I am doing other work. http://budurl.com/bvw3
10. Managing Twitter activities. Tweetdeck is a free Twitter management tool for your desktop. From this tool, you can keep tract of followers, Tweets, specific searches you have created, responses to followers, coordinating with other social media programs. You can manage you entire Twitter program without going directly to your Twitter account. This saves time and helps keep you focused. Three times a day for 10 minutes each time will give a powerful Twitter presence for your business.
http://budurl.com/mnzd
Conclusion
If you follow the above tips, you can create a Twitter marketing process that compliments your other marketing efforts and saves you a bundle of time. Enjoy and prosper.
