—> Access to journalists, editors, investors and entrepreneurs.
—>A platform to motivate, inspire and educate various groups of people … your target audience.
—> The opportunity to join conversations related to your expertise – while attracting potential clients, colleagues and JV partners in the process.
There are just a few of the many reasons that having an active Twitter presence is good for business.
I get lots of questions from lawyers, finance professionals and seasoned consultants about how they can and should be using Twitter in their business. Here are a few ways that I recommend getting started …
1) Create a thoughtful presence. Be thoughtful about the profile picture, bio description and link that you include in your Twitter profile. Use a picture of yourself (not your logo) to increase the likelihood that people will follow you and engage in what I like to call ‘twittersation.' (-:
Use the opportunity to include a website URL in your profile to link to a specific page on your website that contains a call to action (like subscribe to your electronic newsletter) or your ‘About Use' page. This helps to make the most of clicks by people who want to know more about you. Linking to your home page is a bad idea because it's easy for people to get lost there.
2) Develop a list of the types of people you want to to meet Twitter. Twitter is a place to expand your network, not just push our your content. You'll find that when you take time to get to know and find ways to help out key people on Twitter, these folks will help you amply your message.
Informal collaborative relationships like what I have just described move you from being a person that is just shouting out into the Twitterverse hoping that someone will listen … to becoming a thoughtful influencer who deploys content to an interested group of listeners – your Tweeple!
Building relationships on Twitter starts with following the people you want to know and finding opportunities to engage them in conversation. Check out our Facebook page at http://Facebook.com/UpwardAction for a list resources to help you find people to follow on Twitter.
3) As you start following people, create lists to group them by category. This makes it easy to monitor your Twitter stream for tweets written by the people you are the most interested in following.
Need help thinking of what groups to create? Here are a few ideas to get you started … Inc. 500 CEO, Lawyers, Journalists, Coaches, Internet Marketers, Small Business Owners, NJ Businesses, DC Businesses, Women Entrepreneurs, Faith-Based Businesses, MLM Business Owners, Golf Lovers and Chocolate Lovers.
You can make your lists visible to the entire Twitterverse or private so that only those with access to your Twitter account can see them. At UpwardAction®, we have both public and private lists.
4) Now that you are in the flow of organizing the people you follow, begin to curate their content. Go to your lists and share information from your Tweeple with the people who are following you. Retweeting information serves two primary purposes.
First, it helps you provide quality information to your Twitter following, without you having the create the content yourself.
Second, it help to build relationships with your Tweeple. Retweeting content is a great way to get someone's attention, while simultaneously doing something to benefit that person.
In fact, a retweet will often result in an public “thank you” from the person whose content you shared and sometimes the person will follow you on Twitter.
5) Share your original content on Twitter through blog posts, articles, mantras and quotes. Sharing the content of others is a great way to increase your visibility, attract followers and build relationships; however, it will not help you build the type of ‘social brand authority' that will move the needle in your business.
Creating and sharing original content is key to building your social brand authority and establishing yourself as a thought-leader in your industry. Your original content is what makes you special. Having a thoughtful mix of curated content and original content is key to being successful on Twitter and other platforms.
6) Use URL shorteners for links to websites. Twitter limits all posts (aka “Tweets”) to 140 characters, so using a url shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com and Pretty Link decreases the number of characters in your Tweets, enabling you to include more information in each Twitter. Pretty Link is my personal favorite tool because it allows you to use your domain name in the shortened link … which is fantastic for digital branding.
7) Use a scheduling tool to pre-schedule information. Tools like Hootsuite make it easy to have an active Twitter presence that is filled with useful information. Success on Twitter requires a mix of automated and live Tweets.
Pre-scheduled tweets is a great way to share quotes, links to your blog posts and your own ‘quotable quotes.' Live tweeting is effective when sharing content written by others and engaging the folks identified in step one in conversation. If you want to be successful on Twitter, use the proper combination of both.
Now that you know what to do, it's time for your UpwardAction. Get busy!
My best to your best!
TC Cooper
PS– Need help implementing any of these tips, let me know. Head on over to http://UpwardAction.com/Strategy-Session to apply for a complimentary strategy session with me. I'd love to help.
