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How to Use Twitter for Business

Written by: Caroline Melberg

Article Overview: These days, marketing your business means thinking outside of the box. Just thinking that you are going to get the same results by doing the same things you’ve always done is going to allow your competitors to get ahead.

How to Use Twitter for Business

These days, marketing your business means thinking outside of the box. Just thinking that you are going to get the same results by doing the same things you’ve always done is going to allow your competitors to get ahead. Therefore, it is up to you to focus on getting the word out about what you have to offer - and the best way to do that is to go where your customers are!

One of the most popular web services these days is Twitter - a sort of micro-blogging service that allows users to interact in 140 characters or less. Like more traditional blogging, there are a number of people who use Tweets (as Twitter messages are called) to stay in touch with friends. However, there are a number of marketers and sales professionals who are using Twitter for business as well.

When you use Twitter for business, you will find that you are able to forge a connection. With Twitter for business, you will have the opportunity to make announcements about the products and services that you have, to point out great reviews or compliments about your business and - more importantly - to start to build relationships with your customers and prospects.

Not convinced that Twitter for business is something that makes sense for you? Consider this: Twitter is going to allow you to network and make connections - to see what others have on their mind. Twitter is going to enable you to give answers and offer advice, to see what's important to your customers and to understand a bit more about their needs.

Of course, it's also a good idea to think about the way that others use Twitter for business. There's a cafe in Minneapolis, for example, that uses Twitter to connect with customers and to ramp up business on a slower afternoon by offering specials just to their Twitter followers. The more that these followers re-tweet the message, the more business that they are able to do and the more followers they get.

In other words, Twitter for business is going to help you to do more to make a connection with your clients. In just 140 characters, you can be sure that your prospects get a sense of who you are, know what you have to offer and know what other people have to say about it. Twitter is going to let you do more to establish your reputation, to forge relationships and - ultimately - to grow your business.

Marketing and growing a business always requires a bit of progressive thinking and meeting your customers where they are. When you use Twitter for business, you will be able to take advantage of new trends, to reach out to customers and prospects and to focus on showing your customers that you know what matters to them. By making that connection - and always being willing to grow your business - you'll find that you are in a great position to keep making sales and to get others interested in all that you have to offer.

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Article Tags: blogging, cli, compliments, followers, marketers, minneapolis, prospects, relationships, sales professionals, service that allows users, that allows users, thinking outside of the box, twitter



Related Forum Posts
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.) You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
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.
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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