What is Twitter?
Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.
Why do so many people seem to like Twitter?
Simplicity has played an important role in Twitter's success. People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple. Twitter asks one question, "What are you doing?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web.
Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or from third party API projects, Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected.
Isn't Twitter just too much information?
No, in fact, Twitter solves information overload by changing expectations traditionally associated with online communication. At Twitter, we ask one question, "What are you doing?" The answers to this question are for the most part rhetorical. In other words, users do not expect a response when they send a message to Twitter. On the receiving end, Twitter is ambient--updates from your friends and relatives float to your phone, IM, or web site and you are only expected to pay as much or as little attention to them as you see fit. The result of using Twitter to stay connected with friends, relatives, and coworkers is that you have a sense of what folks are up to but you are not expected to respond to any updates unless you want to. This means you can step in and out of the flow of information as it suits you and it never queues up with increasing demand of your attention. Additionally, users are very much in control of whose updates they receive, when they receive them, and on what device. For example, we provide settings for scheduling Twitter to automatically turn off at dinnertime and users can switch off Twitter updates at any point.
Twitter uses in business:
Use Twitter to promote specific articles on your web sites, forums and blogs.
Twitter.com is one of many Web 2.0 technologies that allows you to let people know what you're currently busy with. It sounds a bit silly but it actually has a very real business use.
I use it to share interesting sites and articles with people who are "following" my updates. That means that people who have selected to be notified about what I'm doing will see a notice on their Twitter page about what web sites I'm visiting and so on.
The benefit is that I can build a reputation for myself by linking to interesting stuff out there and then use that reputation to get people to visit MY articles on the same topic.
It's not much in the beginning but, once you have a few thousand people following you (not hard to do if you're intesting), you have an on-top supply of traffic to your web site!
You can use it to promote affiliate products or whatever you like. Pretty neat!
How Can Twitter Help My Business?
A lot of people just don’t get Twitter, they don’t see any value in it. Now if you are using it from a purely personal perspective then really, it is nothing more than a time consuming distraction.
The value comes if you have some kind of business/service/organisation that you want to promote. For example, you might have a standard online or offline business, or perhaps you are an artist, musician etc and want to get your work out into the community… Maybe you work for a charity and would like to gain more public awareness of it. There are many reasons why you might want to go looking for an audience beyond just your own friends and family.
It is well known that the more contact you make with a customer, the more likely you are to make a sale. These days it is much more ‘in vogue’ to sell by not selling, rather than doing the hard-push sales pitch. Twitter is a way of doing that. With Twitter you can chat to people in a friendly way and give them nudges and hints about what you’re doing in your world. Look at the benefits:
It reminds them that you exist
It shows them that you are human
It allows you to mention new offers immediately
It allows you to form a more casual relationship
How to Get Twitter Followers:
When you first join Twitter you will have no followers. You can send updates but the only people likely to see them are the people who are currently surfing the public timeline on the Twitter homepage and that moves pretty fast. You aren’t going to get many followers from there! How then, should you get followers?
Ask For Them Directly
If you are creating a personal account just email your friends, tell them about Twitter and encourage them to sign up and then follow you. If you have a business and you have an email list then you could email the list and do a similar thing. If you have some kind of website, access to a forum etc then post a message about it - write a blog post etc.
One word of warning though - if you are approaching this from a purely business perspective then you need to have something to offer your customers. What I mean is, if you use your Twitter account to just pitch, pitch, pitch, you will not get many followers. Twitter is not something that can be effectively used as a direct selling medium without adding extra benefits.
Stalk Your Targets!
When you start following somebody on Twitter they will get an email telling them of the fact and in that email is a link to your profile. This notification can be turned off but it is on by default and most people leave it on because it is nice to know when somebody starts following you. Human curiosity will result in many of those people checking out your profile and possibly following you back.
This is rather like the strategy of linking to other bloggers if you want them to notice you. You link to them, they see it in their stats and they are curious as to who is talking about them so they check out the link. If they like what they see, they may turn into another reader. The principle is the same with Twitter but there is a caveat here - when they click on your profile, they will see a transcript of your most recent updates. If those updates don’t look interesting or there are none there then not many people will follow you.
This is a tricky situation to get around in the beginning because you have no followers so you feel as though you are talking to yourself. However I’ll show you how you can get your word out there even without followers!
Networking in Your Niche
Unless you are using Twitter just to hook up with your friends, you probably have some kind of niche that you relate to. So for me, that niche is Internet marketing. A musician would have his own niche within the music industry, a charity would also have some kind of niche. You get the picture.
The key is to get out there into your niche and network. To use myself as an example again, I gained most of my initial followers on Twitter via the Thirty Day Challenge. I was a frequent user of the forums (I still am, I am a moderator now) and in my signature I put a link to my Twitter account. When people read my posts on the forums they might click the links in my signature to check me out and maybe follow me.
I’m going to assume that you have some kind of online presence - whether that is a blog, some other website, an account on Facebook etc. If you don’t, then now is the time to create one! Wherever you present yourself on the Internet you should make your Twitter profile known. This also applies to other social networks.
The idea is to participate in the communities within your niche which naturally draws people to you. There is usually some kind of profile feature - whether its just a link in a blog comment, a forum signature of a fully blown profile such as that on Facebook. Everywhere you go online you have the opportunity to say who you are and when you do so, make sure you tell people where they can find you.
Useful Twitter Accounts to Follow
I’ve talked a lot about how you can get other people to follow you but of course let’s not forget the other side of Twitter - finding interesting people for you to follow. Obviously I don’t need to tell you to start following your friends and interesting people from your niche if you have one but these days there are more and more interesting Twitter accounts popping up.
Source: http://clarionsbdckb.blogspot.com/2009/02/advertising-promotion-twitter.html
No comments:
Post a Comment