As Twitter passes its fifth birthday, if you haven?t yet decided to take it seriously for business then it?s time you did. Mark Shaw has just written Twitter Your Business, the perfect book to help you with the job. Here he gives us an introduction to how it?s possible to get one third of your new business from Twitter.
Twitter is not just a social platform but a very useful and important business tool with many different variables. As a business you have to consider your brand and how it is marketed and perceived by your consumers/clients. Twitter provides a place for you to listen in, listen to and liaise with your market audience.
Used well, Twitter will help you build advocates for your brand and eventually referral business. One of my clients, Alicia from Absolute PA found that 56% of all traffic to her website came via Twitter and a third of all new clients in the same year came via Twitter.
Another client Alex Stone of Just Too Busy found that Twitter provided a signpost to her company website and consequently she experienced a 20% rise in visits to her website.
Twitter is full of business people who like to blog about their expertise within their chosen profession and/or sector. They attach their blog URL to their Twitter stream and it is then read by their own followers and the followers of others who might retweet the message with the blog attached as an interesting read! Other people reading this blog may decide to check out the writer, their background, their business or their website!
It is important to understand that Twitter is just another tool for marketing your business: a very powerful one, but not the only tool to use. Twitter should be viewed as a 'bolt-on' to other marketing platforms and it should be part of your overall marketing strategy.
Other platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook work hand in hand with Twitter and messages you send out via this medium can be attached through RSS feeds via LinkedIn and Facebook business accounts. This gives more exposure, and to an audience who may not be using Twitter yet.
The biggest advantage of Twitter for business is what I call it's 'goldmine' and that is the Twitter search engine. Not enough people know of the search engine and what it allows you to do. Here you can search real time conversations of people discussing a need right now for a service or product that your business can offer. It is then possible to join the conversation and enter into discussions where you can offer your expertise or advise and potentially pick up a new client or advocate.
Twitter?s search engine is a goldmine of lead generation that does not involve cold calling or presumptive techniques.
Many business owners and business people ask me ?why is Twitter good for business and how do I use it for business? I answer these very common questions almost on a daily basis, so I wrote Twitter Your Business to inform the wider audience of the benefits of utilizing Twitter to promote themselves and their business.
The Twitter community is a very large marketplace full of potential customers, clients and suppliers as well as a platform for any business person to demonstrate their expertise and to highlight their service or product.
The relevance of the Twitter platform, its business use and its etiquette in the business world is its community of 200 million+ and the 450,000 new people a day joining that community!
I want the people reading my book to know and understand the full benefits of how Twitter is useful and relevant for them and their business and I want them to know how to use it correctly to get the ultimate benefit. I also want people to understand that going forward, Twitter will become an essential for business: there is already evidence to show that much business is already conducted through it and it is becoming an ?expectation? of many customers and clients alike to see a business visible on it!
