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Mark Harmon, Elmer Wheeler & Twitter

Guest post by: Traci Hayner Vanover

Article Overview: If you aren’t yet using the social media phenomenon that is Twitter - get off your keister and start. Right now.

Mark Harmon, Elmer Wheeler & Twitter

Over the holidays, my husband and I were watching a marathon of reruns of NCIS. We really haven’t been fans of the show for very long, so this provided us an opportunity to catch up on the episodes we’d missed. My favorite character is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon. Harmon’s character is a no-nonsense, “just the facts” kind of guy, and is well-known for cutting his coworkers off mid-sentence, and, on occasion, hanging up on them when they get too verbose. Ouch.

A light went off in my head when I realized that many 21st-century prospects are a lot like Gibbs — if we want to hold their attention, we need to cut to the chase.

Twitter is an excellent tool to help you hone this precious skill. Twitter provides you just 140 precious characters to convey your message — something that Gibbs could certainly appreciate.

Legendary salesman Elmer Wheeler was a big fan of this concept, saying “Sometimes your first 10 words—or your first 10 seconds—are as important as the next 10,000!”

Social media has developed its own shorthand to help us keep our messages short. Here are a few of the more popular abbreviations:

LOL : laugh out loud

ROFL : roll on floor laughing

BRB : be right back

AFK : away from keyboard

THX : thanks / thank you

TTYL : talk to you later

YW : you’re welcome

GTG : go to go

SRY: sorry

NP : no problem

FWIW: for what it’s worth

IMHO: in my humble opinion

LMK: let me know

Don’t misunderstand me – I am not advocating you begin spamming the social media sites with endless sales pitches. Social media is first and foremost to establish relationships. We all know that folks will buy from people that they know, like and trust — focus on those goals, and the sales will surely follow.

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Article Tags: establishing relationships, social media, social networking, twitter



Related Forum Posts
Hi all from Australia!! - Hi all, My name is Mark. I've been involved in the direct selling industry for the last 10 years since I was introduced to amway way back then, in one or another venture.. I'm here to mix and mingle with other people like myself, like minded entrepreneurs if you will and contribute a little from what knowledge I do have about marketing. I look forward to chatting with everyone out there. Regards, Mark
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic? - I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products? - How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Help in a Struggling Economy - If anyone on the forum has a question they would like me to ask Mark Tewart on my show Monday Dec 22 - just let me know. I hope to ask him about all kinds of advice that he can share with people who want to improve their sales skills and their life and personal skills. There are many ways to improve our position in business - whether we are the boss or workers -- imagine if you learned to make yourself more valuable to your employer and/or your clients???? Mark can share great information to help you improve your skills and make yourself more valuable. Shri
Re: Social Media Works If You Do It Right... - Hi Michelle, Ah, but it seems hashtags are still being used by a lot of people - including Twitter! So I would still use them for your keywords. It's just that if you are searching for something on Twitter you can either go the #hashtag route, or do a direct search on the Twitter homepage. I guess you could use #hashtags when searching on the Twitter homepage as well! DH


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