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I do wonder at times if some Twitter users have any time to get any work done. Several of the more prolific ones that I follow swear they spend no more than 30 minutes a day on Twitter, but I really find that hard to believe. Many times it seems they are twittering just to say a touch, like “Excellent morning Twitterverse” when they start their day, give more details than I want to know about what they had for lunch, what their children said to them, or when they take a nap.
I realize that this is part of the “like, know, and trust” process that enables people to get to know each other, but sometimes it’s simply too much information..LOL. I’m Twittering primarily to market my business. Consequently, I try and limit my personal twitters to no more than 2 per day. My clients, who make Twitter financial statement for marketing, as well, tell me, “I’m signed up. Now what in the world do I Twitter about? How do I market my business with this tool?”
Here are 10 strategies that I use evenly to marketing my business and my expertise via Twitter. Remember, you have only 140 characters for your peep (Twitter post).
1. How you’re helping clients. Talk about specific ways that your business helps clients and use their Twitter ID if you have their consent, i.e. “Just finished @clientname brainstorm fantastic Internet marketing plot for 2009″ or “Irrevocably finished setting up Quickbooks for local hardware store — now they can invoice their clients”
2. What you’re doing in your own business. This is a perfect time to tell others when you’re blogging, writing an article, making your weekly ezine, recording your podcast, i.e. “Had fantastic interview with Jane Smith today on speaking to grow your biz. Fantastic thoughts! Subscribe to podcast & listen here ”
3. Useful tool or resource you’ve found. I run across these all the time in my daily activities, and Twitter is a perfect place to share,. i.e. “Found fantastic new Firefox plug-in to monitor & check multiple Gmail financial statement at same time at ” or “Read fantastic blog post on working at home with kids under 5 at (URL here)”
4. Question a question. Need some thoughts or some quick brainstorming? Twitter is an ultimate place to gather opinions, i.e. “Help! Desperately seeking new laser printer. Recommendations?” or “How do I find training organizations online?”
5. Conduct a survey. What do your Tweeps reckon about a particular issue? Question them via Twitter, i.e. “Quick poll: Do you get more clients from Facebook or Twitter? Respond at (URL here)”
6. Report on live events. The newest Twitter trend seems to be tweeting what’s happening at conferences or workshops. In order for Twitter users to follow a particular event, it’s usually referred to by a name preceded by a # sign, as in #JVAlert, for example, to make it simpler for people who want to follow those posts. So, if you were at an event, you might peep “#JVAlert John Smith speaking on affiliate programs. Just got fantastic thought on training affiliate managers!” Just don’t get so wrapped up in tweeting that you ignore the content delivered in the conference!
7. Product or service launch. If you’re about to launch a new product or introduce a new product, let your Twitter followers know, i.e. “Pre-launch pricing for new DVD set about how baby boomers can start an online biz. Get $100 early bird discount at (URL here)”
8. Responding to others with advice or answers. The way to build qualified relationships on Twitter is to help your tweeps. So, if a name questions a question, comments about a touch to which you have a response or an thought, or you want to question a followup question, this is the perfect place to do so.
9. Acknowledging new followers. I’ve noticed a recent trend of acknowledging people who’ve chose to follow a Twitter user in the past day or so. I initially thought that others were doing this as a measure of popularity, but what I’ve come to realize that it’s really helping out the new followers because it exposes their Twitter profiles to others who may have never heard of them and who might like to follow them. So, to thank your followers, you’d peep, “Welcome new followers @twittername, @twittername, etc.”
10. Automate your tweets. Many of my tweets have been automated and connected to other things I do. TwitterFeed turns all of my blog posts into tweets. aWeber turns each ezine issue into a peep. EzineArticles.com tweets my followers every time I publish an article through their service. Typically all that’s involved here is connecting the particular service to my Twitter account. Once all the air force are connected, I get free and automated Twitter posts with no bonus effort on my part.
Twitter can be a fantastic time-waster or a wonderful way to market your business and leverage your expertise online. Follow these 10 strategies and you’ll start to attract more followers and get more clients through social networking.
Posts Tagged ‘Attract’
10 Secrets to Using Twitter to Attract More Followers and Get More Clients
Friday, March 5th, 2010Five Ways to Promote Your Business Online — Part Iv: How RSS Can Attract Visitors to Your Small Business Website
Thursday, January 21st, 2010What Is RSS?
“RSS” originally stood for “Rich Site Summary.” Now it is popularly known as “Really Simple Syndication” because it is a quick and simple way to publicize, or syndicate, fresh content across the web. RSS is in print in XML format and is also referred to as a newsfeed.
How Can RSS Feed Help Your Small Business Website?
In addition to excellent keywords and excellent keyword phrases, fresh and relevant content is a further imp ortant component of SEO (discussed in Part III of this series). Search engines are constantly on the lookout for new content. To do this they use what are called “search engine spiders” to “crawl” websites and add them to the search engines. RSS or newsfeeds update frequently and because of this they add content to a website on a honestly fixed basis. Search engine spiders like this! Your website visitors will too, if you provide them with content that is relevant and appealing. RSS adds to what I call your “expertise quotient.” The more information you can give your visitors the more inclined they are to viewing you as an expert in your field. If they see you as an expert, they are more likely to turn to you (over your competition) for the goods and air force you provide. For instance, let’s say you run a violin repair shop and you are one of two or three in your area. If your website can place forward visitors information about how to care for and repair their violins, you establish yourself as an expert. When it comes time for a violin user in your area to get his violin repaired, he’s more likely to come to you because you’re the expert.
How to Get RSS Feed on Your Website
Use It
The simplest way to include RSS feed on your website is to use feed from other sources. RSS is available on a wide variety of topics. For instance, if had a golf business and you did a Google search for “RSS golf” you would find 106,000,000 sites (as of this writing) offering golf info and most of them providing RSS newsfeed you can use on your website.
Make Your Own
Making your own RSS feed greatly improves your expertise quotient because the information is coming frankly from your own background and experience. Now previous to you write yourself off as not being an expert, take a moment to reckon about what you do for a living. People come to you all the time looking for advice and information in your particular area of expertise. You wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t know your business! Now instead of just talking about it, you can write it down and turn it into an RSS feed. Instant content! Instant expertise! The really huge advantage of making your own RSS is that you can make it available to people all over the ‘Net and those feeds translate into instant backlinks to your website.
For instance, DellwoodWebDesign.com has an RSS page with links from the Inhabitant Federation of Independent Business. The newsfeed features snippets from the NFIB. Clicking on any of those snippets takes you to the NFIB website. That’s an instant backlink for them courtesy of DellwoodWebDesign.com. Now, imagine you making your own RSS feed and having others use it on their sites. If Joe web designer decides to use your RSS on his site, that RSS points back to its source–and that’s you!
But how do you get that feed on your site?
To include RSS on your website you need to use a touch called an RSS aggregator. The simplest way to do this is to use a service like RSSinclude from RSS-Info.com. Getting RSS feed onto your site could not be simpler and it requires very small coding. All you do is find the RSS feed site you want to include, plug it into the RSSinclude form, and it generates the code you need. You can even customize it to make the feed look like it is part of your site.
If you have produced your own feed, RSS-Info features a free RSSeditor that helps you make and upload the feed you make. You don’t even need to know XML. Just fill out the form, answer a few questions and you have instant RSS feed.
The toughest part of the total process is incorpoarting the code into your site and a excellent web designer can do that!
RSS is a way to build instant credibility with your visitors. It can set you apart from your competitors as the expert in your field. It provides fresh content to your site on a fixed basis and it can help improve your website’s page rank. There’s very small reason not to incorparate RSS as part of your small business website.