Article Submitted by iClimber.
If you are serious about mastering internet marketing it is vital to know how to use Twitter for business marketing.
A lot of people still can’t see the point of Twitter, and think of it as just a way for teenagers to communicate with other. Twitter is used in different ways by different people, but it can not be denied that if used properly it can be a gold mine for marketers.
It is celebrities that create most of the headlines on Twitter, with Lady Gaga being the classic example. At the time of writing she had over 16 million followers that love reading what she is up to in her tweets.
Twitter is best described as a broadcasting medium, but it is not just celebrities that benefit from it. Internet marketers and traditional business owners can create interest in their brand as well, because they can easily communicate with their clients and prospects at the touch of a button.
Building Up A Following
There are lots of Twitter following software programs about if you search for them, but I don’t recommend you use them for two reasons. Using software is a much quicker way of accumulating a large number of followers in the short term, but long term it rarely ends up being profitable.
Firstly Twitter frowns upon people using software to add mass amounts of followers, and will more than likely catch up with you eventually and ban your account – just like they did to 4 of my previous accounts. You have to go back and start from scratch, and it is just not worth the risk.
And secondly because you are more than likely going to end up with large quantities of people that don’t really know who you are (or care), and are not targeted. The biggest takeaway here is that quality is far more important than quantity, and in my opinion you are better of letting your list of followers grow naturally.
The other thing to be careful about is using multiple accounts. If you do decide to do this, keep the accounts completely separate. Each account should be based on a completely different niche or alias, and should not have the same tweets overlapping on multiple accounts. If you ignore this then you risk having all the accounts suspended.
To build up a large following without software you need to get your name out there, and also to be tweeting a lot of useful or interesting content. It is better if you are tweeting your own content, but you can also tweet about other people’s content if it is good. By retweeting other people’s tweets you start to make friends with people as well.
Your twitter link should be plastered everywhere – on your blog posts, your email signature, your social media profiles and even your business cards. It is also best to use a Twitter name that is easy to remember and spell if possible, and even better if your name or company name is still available to use.
But the most important thing to remember is to not be spamming people and constantly advertising to “buy my stuff”. This is where 80% of Twitter marketers get it wrong. The idea is to use awesome content to drive people to your website/blog, and to then focus on getting them to opt into your list as a subscriber.
Spamming is definitely not how to use Twitter for business marketing, because people don’t go onto Twitter to buy things, they go on there to be educated or entertained. This is crucial.
What you should be tweeting about
The first thing that I recommend you do is to follow the leading experts in your niche to see what they tweet about. Now obviously I don’t mean that you copy what they are tweeting about, but by studying them you can get a feel for how they attract such a large following.
Are their tweets all content? Are their tweets all about what they are currently doing or thinking? Or maybe a combination of both? Who are they retweeting?
Keep in mind that unless your tweets are either interesting, humorous or educational no one is going to bother taking any notice.
A good way to generate interest on Twitter is to ask a question about something, or direct people towards an interesting poll. This can easily create discussions between a lot of people and you will notice that some of these people will start following you.
Posting images on Twitter also can get a lot of clicks if you intrigue people enough with the text in the tweet. People like to look at images, instead of just reading text. And exactly the same thing goes for video as well.
Most people like to read inspirational quotes as well. You can use a software program called Social Oomph to send out random automated quotes if you set it up correctly (which is not hard).
If you do decide that you want to be promoting your products a lot on Twitter, then make sure you promote other people a lot as well. No one wants to follow a person that is only interested in themselves.
You can use NetworkedBlogs to send out your brand new blog posts to Twitter, and you can also use a WordPress plugin called “Tweet Old Post” to randomly tweet your older posts on a predetermined recurrence. The best part about these two free tools is that they are automated – set them up once and forget them.
Oh, and I nearly forgot
Make sure you use Twitter Search to find out what the current hot topics are. If you can find something that is related to your niche/industry it is a great idea to tweet something relevant to the hot topic.
Twitter Search can also be used to see what people are saying about yourself as well, which can be an interesting exercise to say the least. Nothing like knowing people are gossiping about you or your business.
Article provided by iClimber. iClimber offers social media marketing and Twitter marketing services.
