Using Twitter to Find New Clients

Twitter was launched 2006 and over the past few years, it has shown phenomenal growth. In fact, in February of 2009, Twitter was ranked as the 3rd most popular site on the internet, next to MySpace and Facebook. Many business owners are now using Twitter to promote their business. However, many don’t know how to make the most of the site to their advantage. For you Tweeters who operate any kind of business, here are some great tips for you: Set Up Your Twitter Account for Business You must create your own Twitter account first before you can use the site for business purposes. Luckily, that is not hard to do. Once your account has been opened, you should create a profile page for your business.  You can also design your own background, or have one designed for you, and have your business info on the backdrop image. Doing so will help your visitors to know that you are serious, and will help the search engines to distinguish your account from others which may be automatically generated by spammers. Once you have your account, profile, and backdrop image in place, you can start letting other Twitter users know about your business. Use Twitter for Market Research Twitter is a great place for market research. Every business has its target market. Through Twitter, you can easily access your target market and get pertinent feedback from them. Many of today’s business owners fail because they don’t understand the true needs of their market. With the help of Twitter, you can easily listen to the needs of your prospects, the issues they are currently up against, and find out the kind of help they are looking for. You’ll just need to listen and ask questions. Studying your target market is very important for your business success. Identify their needs and wants so that you can give them answers. Remember, you must try to build trust and confidence. Twitter has jillions of users from all over the world. Just imagine how many of them you can get to visit your business. Gathering clients through Twitter is not as difficult as you might think. Use Twitter to Build a List Twitter is a natural list builder. People who are interested in your business subject will seek you out and sign on as your follower, and will read your Tweets. You can also find other like-minded Twitterers and follow them. Many will follow you back. It is said that as many as 40% of those you follow will follow you back. These followers can be considered a list of sorts. Once you have your list, you can, and should, share information with them. Some examples would be a quick Tweet asking them to opt-in to your newsletter, or offering them a free download. You don’t want to promote your business every single time you communicate with your target market, or you might be considered a spammer, but it’s absolutely ok to mention it every now and then. Build Relationships with Your Followers Whenever you meet someone on Twitter, try to start a good relationship. You are a customer too. You buy from businesses that you trust and like. Your target market also behaves the same way. You must get to know your clients better and win their trust and confidence. Ninety percent of your Twitter updates should contain helpful content and try to limit your promotion. In this way, you can attract more leads and later on they may become subscribers or customers. Tweet Your Events If you offer podcasts or any other type of event, you should send out invitations to your followers through Twitter. It’s no-cost and immediate. Start early, and send out several invitations and reminders, interspersed with your other Tweets. The more Twitters who see your invitations and reminders, the more you will be promoting your business. Start A Blog Your followers will need a website to visit to find out more about you and your business and what it has to offer. In order to show authority in your business, a good blog or website is a must. You can easily create a blog, or have one created for you. There are many tools that can automatically check for any posts you have made to your blog and share them with your Twitter followers. Once you have determined what your market wants or needs, you can write blog posts or write articles about those needs and wants. You can also create a new service to meet such needs or perhaps you can conduct a teleseminar on a topic that would interest your target market. Any blog posts, articles, teleseminar, videos or podcasts that you create will attract more prospects to your site, both through the usual channels like the search engines, and also through Twitter. You’ll be nicely surprised at the number of visitors you will receive instantaneously after “Tweeting” about a new post. Conclusion Twitter asks you the question – What are you doing? You must answer this question, in 140 characters or less, so that you can let the entire world know about your business. After that, you can follow the helpful tips mentioned earlier. Visit this site for more great articles and even more more detail on using Twitter for business,