How To Use Twitter For Business (And Lead Generation)
Posted by Jody Raines
Social media marketing is important as part of an effective internet strategy and website tool. As an Internet Marketing Strategist, part of what i do on a daily basis is assist my clients with using tools such as Twitter as part of an overall plan. Sometimes it's 
interesting when a client feels they are already doing something correctly, to show them that there are ways to improve the ROI of their internet investment.
I had a conversation with a client today about Twitter. Yes, they have a Twitter account, and yes, they've done some tweeting. However, a quick look at their account, and I knew instantly that they were struggling how to use Twitter.
Social Media marketing is not much different than regular marketing. To some, because social media marketing is new and it's a bit geeky, it's foreign territory. The idea of communicating over the Internet is where they get hung up. They open an account, maybe even create a profile, then they get 'tongue tied' (or more appropriately 'finger tied') because they don't understand the protocol.
In this instance, the stream of tweets indicated that something was glaringly missing.
What was it?
Every statement in their carefully crafted 140 character tweets was presenting their business well. They did a great job.
Bottom line: Doesn't matter how great of a sale you have... No one is listening to your tweets!
But wait, they did have about 200 followers, who they were sure were hanging on every tweet, just fascinated to see what was coming next.
Reality check. No one is listening!
You can have a zillion followers and if you do not have any interaction, you can be sure you are tweeting to no one.
So, how do we remedy this? What's the cure? And how do we use Twitter to make it an effective tool for business?
Jody's Top 5 Tips For Effective Twittering:
1. Figure out who you want to talk with. Let's say you can identify people based on their interests or their geography, or even by their company. If you can do that, do you think you can find a few people who are interesting to communicate with? If the answer is yes, there are ways to do this, in my next post, I'll give you some tools that help.
2. Once you figure out who you want to listen to, follow them. What I like to do is read a few of their posts to get an idea what they 'talk' about, then possibly ask them a question or respond to one of their posts. This has nothing to do with business, it's simply a way to get on their radar.
3. Build your following by aligning with influential Tweeps. Some of the twitteratti have so many followers that they don't check who they are or are not following, therefore if you would like a reciprocal relationship, it's important to let them know that you exist. The simplist and easiest way is to say 'hi'. Re-tweeting is also effective (RT) and follow friday is another great way to pay a compliment (#FF or #FollowFriday).
4. Listen to the conversation by using a 'Twitter Client' such as Seesmic, Hootesuite or Tweetdeck. These interfaces enable to you follow and monitor specific people that you organize into groups. It's much easier to scan these if you organize your followers by category. It's also easier to jump in and out of conversations.
5. Don't just talk about your business. Use the 70-20-10 rule where 70% of the time you are being social, 20% of the time you are sharing information and just 10% of the time you talk about what you do.
The KEY is to establish relationships. And here is the gold at the end of the rainbow - by establishing these relationships, when you have something you need to get out there, to a huge audience, you can ask for the ReTweet... which has two huge implications:
1. Your message will be conveyed to the followers of your followers - a much much bigger audience than your followers alone.
2. The impact of someone extolling your virtues (or your company's virtues) is much much greater than your telling people just how wonderful you are. This takes on the tone of a recommendation or "Word Of Mouth" advertising, the most powerful advertising you can generate.
But don't take my word for it. Try some of these tips and then let me know if they work for you. Also, if you have additional tips on how you use Twitter to make it effective, I'd love to hear about them.
Send me a tweet @Sunswept next time your on Twitter and let's connect!
WebMarCom is an Internet strategy and Web Marketing Communications Agency based in South Jersey and Philadelphia.