Twitter Who Has the Time?

Ok tell the truth. What was the first thing you thought when you visited Twitter? I thought this is ridiculous. Who has time to write this stupid stuff all day? It looked like a mess of mixed up comments and strange looking links flying by with no rhyme or reason to me.

But since I was studying social media and its effect on marketing I had to join and boy I am sure glad I did. Now after many months and countless tweets (those are what your posts are called) I have definite proof that it is an effective strategy for marketing your business. I just got my first client that came 100% directly from Twitter!

So you ask, how did that happen? Why, after watching those millions of tweets going by, did they pick me? Here are my thoughts on that.

When I started on Twitter I spent the necessary time developing my profile. I didn’t just fill in something quick to get started and fool myself by thinking I would come back later to fix it.

I customized my background to give the people who visited my profile an idea of “who I was”. You know what I mean. You can pick themes which are extremely dignified or businesslike, all the way too happy go lucky or frivolous. My goal was a mixture of professional and approachable. Did it work?

I checked all my links to make sure they worked especially the links that allow people to get in touch with me if they wanted to.

I committed to spending at least 30 minutes a day in 5 minute chunks of time on Twitter almost every day. Since I use Twitter primarily for business I don’t spend a lot of time there on the weekend.

When looking for people to follow, I began with the people I admire in business and I watched what they did for a while. Then I began slowly joining the conversation.

I re-Tweeted interesting and important Tweets whenever possible. This will help you get noticed by your colleague which is never a bad thing.

I looked for people in my target market on Facebook or from the emails I get and then followed them too.

I did not automatically follow everyone that followed me. First I first checked out their messages and then I went to their website. I did not have to always agree with what they said but I certainly did not want it to embarrass me or my Mom (age 75, sorry mom for telling) who also follows me.

At least 80% of my Tweets were helpful information, useful links or reTweets. 20% promotional stuff is Ok

There are lots more hints but I wanted to know for sure so I asked my new client and this is her answer. She liked the color of my background… Who knows what the deciding factor will be for you.

Now it’s your turn. http://twitter.com/