Twitter.com can be an excellent resource for your business if you use it effectively.
Create a high quality profile
Twitterers will judge a book by it’s cover so to speak and you should make sure that your Twitter profile contains a relevent picture rather than the default image, this could be your photograph or company logo for example, and you should select one of the options of background images and not leave your background as the default choice.
Your profile description can be 160 characters so make sure you use them wisely. Make sure that it includes a strong call to action linked to benefits. Use the website URL to link back to your lead capture or squeeze page.
Post your first tweet!
You should never sell in your first tweet – or any other tweets for that matter. You should make it sound intriging and include a link to a URL. I recommend you use the URL shortening service www.bit.ly which can also provide analytics so that you can see how many clicks your tweets are getting.
Do’s and don’ts of tweeting
Post information that will be useful to your followers. This will encourage people to follow you back when you follow them. Remember that your profile URL link and your description do the job of promoting your business. Make sure that all your tweets are interesting and informative.
Ask your followers questions and try to get them to interact with you. Remember to occasionally post something that is personal about you so that people know you are a real person and not just an automated account.
Don’t just post links to your own articles and websites. Instead post links to interesting news articles, YouTube videos, photos, retweet your follower’s interesting links, and post motivational quotes that will keep your followers interested and hopefully get them to retweet you to their followers.
Automatically thank new followers
Use the free service provided by SocialOomph to send an auto-DM message to your new followers. You should thank them for following you, explain you would like to help them, and provide a bit.ly shortlink to your main squeeze page.
This helps to build a relationship with your new followers and drives traffic to your site.
Add new followers regularly
Use the search facility of Twitter to find people who are tweeting about subjects related to your particular niche or industry. For example a florist might search for people mentioning “flowers”, and a watch retailer could search for people mentioning “Rolex”,”new watch”,”buy a watch”, etc.
Once you get a search result list simply put your mouse over their avatar image and click the Follow + link that appears. Repeat this process each day until you have enough followers.
Many of the people you follow will in turn follow you and this way you quickly build your followers. Periodically you and unfollow anyone who hasn’t followed you. There are several tools on the internet that allow you to unfollow unmutual twitter users semi-automatically.
Interact with your followers daily
Effective use of Twitter for business purposes involves building relationships with your followers, providing them with valuable free information, and never trying to sell anything to them or spamming them. Offer valuable help and you will experience huge success in your business leveraging the penetration of Twitter.
Speak directly to your followers as though you are speaking to one person. Find out what makes you unique in your niche and highlight those differences in your tweets. Research your target audience and try to cater for their wants and needs. This way you will come up with the best tweets and experience the greatest increase in your web traffic and leads.
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A great resource for new bloggers, I have just started using twitter to get traffic but this post helps, thanks.