Twitter is an emerging social technology that can help you grow your network, build your personal brand online, and listen and connect with customers. These tools can connect you with potential clients and help build a relationship prospective customers. Twitter has about 4 million active users and is continuing to grow very rapidly.
What is Twitter
Twitter is also known as a microblogging service. Most users publish short updates of 140 characters or less to their Twitter account. They can be thoughts, interesting links, or what you are doing. Anyone can follow your account and receive your “Tweets” every time you update your account.
Setting Up Twitter
Setting up is fast and easy. Log onto twitter.com and enter your username. You can use your real name, your company’s name, or a made up name.
It is ideal to integrate Twitter with your mobile phone. You can make updates with your mobile phone by sending a text to 40404. In order to do this, Go to twitter.com, go into settings, click on “devices” and enable Tweets by cell, by entering your phone number. (you can edit which users updates get sent to your phone if you perfer, you will get charged by your cell phone company for each update unless you are on an unlimited plan).
For a good example of a Twitter account, check out Chuck Besondy’s at twitter.com/cbesondy or the twitter.com/oneaccord
Networking
Start following people that you know or want to know. Often when you follow someone they will follow you back. If you have set up Twitter on your phone you can text “follow ___” to 40404 to start receiving updates. For example if I want to follow Paul Travis I could text “follow paultravis”.
There are over 6,000 companies currently on Twitter. For a list of these companies visit www.Twibs.com
You can also find executives using Twitter at www.exectweets.com
You can also send direct messages to people that follow you. Online go to “direct messages” in the sidebar. From your phone enter “d username” followed by the message. For example d oneaccord I really liked that article you linked to. Very interesting!
When referring to another Twitterer it is customary to use @. For example @cbesondy had a really good thought about the sales funnel.
Some advice on what to Tweet:
Some people question the value of Twitter when they first hear about it. They may ask “why would someone care about what I’m doing”?
Usually it is best to tweet valuable content for the target customer. This could be thoughts on marketing, sales, or business. Also you can point out interesting articles that you read. Finally a little personal information can help followers get to know you.
The greatest value of Twitter is the direct communication channel to your followers. A Twitter update gets sent out to all your followers, instantly reaching many on their cell phones via SMS. Many brands such as Zappos and Comcast have used Twitter in this way to reach thousands of customers instantly and directly. Many marketers such as Chris Brogan and Scott Monty have built well known personal brands with 10,000+ followers.
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