If you read my article about hooked on Twitter for personal reasons, you’ll see there are at least 5 reasons I love it for me.
You’re probably also wondering, “Can I really use this for business?”
In a word: ABSOLUTELY!
Here are 5 of my favorite ways to use Twitter for business.
Show off your best – One of my favorite new Twitter friends is @blatzliquor. Joe does a GREAT job of talking about his specials, reminding folks when it’s 30 minutes before you can’t buy beer anymore in Milwaukee, when he has a party, and all sorts of fun stuff. Joe shows off what he does and is (a liquor store) and does so in a VERY human way.
Search for customers – go to http://search.twitter.com and put what you’re interested in finding more information about, or find out who’s asking what for services you provide. You don’t have to be a freelancer to leverage it, but you DO have to be fast. If someone asks a question you can answer, use the @handle of the person asking the question, and quickly answer it. Better still, if you’ve been writing solution oriented articles, you can include a quick link to your article with your answer to make yourself even more relevant.
Search for thought leaders to learn from them – Unless you’re in a completely unique niche that nobody else is doing, chances are there are folks that do what you do. Use http://search.twitter.com and find who’s in your niche, and with one click, just follow them.
Follow and contribute to trending topics – On the Twitter homepage, you can see what trends are being talked about the most, and you can see where you can contribute.
Track the conversation about your idea or event – If you’re hosting an event or raising money or you have a new idea that you’d like folks to contribute to, think about seeing up a has tag. It’s simple, just use # and the name of the event. We did this VERY effectively for Business School for Bloggers conference I just went to (we used #sobcon) and everyone who was there used the hashtag and we were able to get near the top of the Twitter Trends list. Even today, weeks after the conference is over, folks are still using this tag. It keeps the conversation going AND makes folks wonder what all the buzz is about.
What are YOUR favorite ways to use Twitter for business?
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Phil,
Thanks for the great article. Another way is to turn your RSS feeds from sites & corporate blogs into Tweets through http://twitterfeed.com/. It provide and easy way to stay in touch with existing customers and get your content into Twitter Search. Capitalize on the growth of Twitter and Twitter Search (According to data from Compete.com visits to the Twitter search page grew more than 400% in the last six months. Grew 24% in April.) by exposing your ideas and tweets to new customers. Best -mp
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Michael – You are absolutely right, and I’ll mention that in another article soon. Thanks for the reminder!
GREAT stats too! Thanks
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Hi Phil .. I’m almost back .. then I’ll be up and running and going to be putting your ideas into action .. so watch this space .. thanks for information – you have such good ideas and it’s great to learn from you ..
All the best Hilary Melton-Butcher
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Sounds great Hilary! Let me know how I can help!
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