Baby Stepping Into Twitter With The Right Tools

Twitter has found itself on the end of Facebook and tailing fast as one of the fastest growing social networks on the web.  It has grown at a fairly steady pace since its launch in July of 06 and has seen spikes in activity on and off throughout that time.  Within the last 14 months, Twitter has seen periods of explosive growth that have caused numbers to skyrocket.

I can’t imagine there are too many people that don’t have accounts with the social media giant yet – but if you don’t you should. At the very least to reserve a name for your company so someone else isn’t using it.  That company names offers a lot of opportunity for building a name for your company, sharing content through your business for the purpose of branding and lead generation.

You definitely don’t want a competitor registering your name.  That affords them a lot of opportunity to generate problems for you and shut your out of the social media game – at least under that name.  This kind of thing has happened and continues to happen on a daily basis so it’s important to protect your brand.

Granted the whole idea of Twitter seems simple enough but it can be a little overwhelming to someone trying to break into it without any knowledge of what to do.  As a new user, you should spend plenty of time in the FAQ as well as browsing around the home page and the profiles of other users to see how they utilize their Twitter accounts.

Review the content around you to see what people are saying.  You might even get lucky and find people that are talking about your brand if you dig around and do some egotistical snooping of your name.  If you find someone talking about you or your brand, you can take the opportunity to join the discussion.

Some would argue that social media and Twitter don’t produce quality leads like other channels.  That’s just not true.  The people who aren’t getting any decent leads out of Twitter are the ones who aren’t making the proper effort and using efficient strategies to do so.  You can’t just add 10,000 followers and then scream links at them in hopes that someone follows. You have to engage people.

Twitter is an amazing channel for connecting to and engaging prospects as well as customers.  When you can reach out in ways that are helpful to these people then you can gain a lot of credibility – even trust.   If you’re a local business, this can really stand out to the community.

Now, this system isn’t just a social media platform with simple options.  There’s a lot you can do to reinforce and leverage your efforts within Twitter through the use of outside applications and tools designed by third parties.  These tools are intended to streamline the Twitter experience and add more functionality.  If you want more control over the Twitter experience, there’s an app for that.

There are a variety of tools that help you organize followers, streamline search, easily access content, get better notifications, and update ALL of your social networks easily.  There are even options for weeding out the irrelevant conversations so you can stay targeted to more relevant info with your targeted followers.

It’s an amazing tool in itself for getting in touch with the local community, particularly in areas where there is a heavier population – basically any major city.  When you combine a lot of the free tools with Twitter, you can begin to implement a powerful strategy to put your business right in the lap of consumers and you don’t have to make a sales pitch at all.

When you offer valuable content through Twitter, people love to share it.  Everyone you connect with becomes an evangelist for you – you just need to dish the content, let your network do the rest.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Related posts:

1. How To – Linking WordPress and Twitter
2. Building Your Brand – Manage Twitter Like a Pro
3. How To Send The Right Message On Twitter
4. 6 Tips for Using Twitter for Business
5. LinkedIn and Twitter – Bout time they got it on.