9 Tips for Using Twitter in Your Small Business
Forget what you have heard about Twitter. I want you to think of Twitter as your personal online network. When you look at Twitter as a personal networking group, you will begin to see how it can help your business.
The secret to Twitter networking is to apply the same skills you use with business networking groups. I will identify those networking skills and show you how to apply them to your Twitter networking. Let me know your thoughts on this approach to Twitter in the comment section below.
Business Networking Skills
I am sure that you have participated in some form of business networking group. The purpose of these groups is to gather business people together, usually at a weekly meeting, to provide word of mouth referrals. Here are a list of skills master networkers use to be successful at these meetings.
Networking is Not a Quick Fix
Business networking requires patience. Joining a business networking group with the expectations of getting immediate results is unrealistic. Networking takes time to establish relationships and credibility. Business networking is not a quick fix.
Join the Right Networking Group
All networking groups are not equal. Most business networking groups are a conglomeration of many different businesses. What if the members of a particular group are not a good source of business for you?
One lady who owned a decorating business attended a popular networking group. She didn’t get the referrals she wanted. She quit the group and joined a professional women’s business group—prime candidates for her decorating services. The master networkers know that all groups are not equal.
Have an Agenda for Every Meeting
Master networkers come every meeting with an agenda they want to accomplish. This could be meeting someone new at the meeting, sharing a resource with another member, following up on a promise they made. They go to every meeting with a purpose, things they want to accomplish.
Clarity About Their Business
Master networkers go beyond the business labels, “I’m a real estate agent” or generalizations about their business, “I sell houses.” They are clear about the benefits their business provides. They know specifically who is a good referral for their business. They tell members of the group exactly how they will work with the referrals given to them. Their clarity makes it easy for group members to give them good referrals.
Be Interested in Others
The number one rule of business networking is “Be Interested”. Master networkers do not pushed their business card in every face at a business networking meeting. Business networking success comes from being interested in group members and creating relationships with them. Who are they? What is their business about? What’s important to them? What challenges do they face? What do they like and dislike? Many networking groups have a function called one to one’s. They spend time talking with another group member one to one to learn more about them and their business.
Give Before You Get
Another success principle of business networking is Give before your Get. Givers Gain! It doesn’t take long in a business networking group for people to identify the “Takers” from the “Givers”. Takers come to the meetings wanting referrals from others and give little in return. Givers look for ways to give referrals to others; to share resources and materials with others; to help others become more successful in their businesses.
The Money Is in the Follow Up
Business networking groups are not deal making places. They are connecting places. Connecting is not measured by how many business cards you can get or give out. Connecting is the spark that comes from listening to others, being interested in others and following up with others.
Good networkers know the money is in the follow up. They follow up on the connections they make at networking meetings. They use phone calls, emails, and send helpful resources as ways of following up. They keep the connections alive with ongoing follow up activities.
Consistent Participation Skills
The worst thing a business networker can do is join a group and participate on a random basis. Networking groups have an unwritten rule “To get good referrals from others you need to show up every week and participate”. Out of sight; out of mind. Consistency and participation are ways master networkers create credibility with people in a networking group. Group members learn more from behavior than words.
The Real Power of Networking
The real power of networking is not who you know but who they know. This is the fundamental principle of business networking. Master business networkers realize the power of their networking group is not in the group members. It’s in the second and third level of people each member knows outside of the group.
Experts tell us that each of us knows about 250 people. What happens once we contact these 250 people? Where do we go from there? Each of these people we know also knows 250 people. If each the people we know introduced us to 5 of their contacts and each of those contacts introduced us to five of their contacts, well, you can do the math. A network increases exponentially. The real power of networking is second and third levels of people.
Conclusion
These are the basic building blocks and skills master networkers use for success. Now let’s apply the same building blocks and skills to operating your Twitter network group.
Your Twitter Network
Twitter is Not a Quick Fix for Your Business
As a digital network, Twitter calls for patience. If you are looking for short term results you will need to adjust your expectations.
It takes time to establish a brand presence on Twitter. It takes time to build up the right followers who actually listen to you. It takes starts and stops to make Twitter into an effective marketing tool. Look at Twitter as a long term marketing strategy.
The Right Followers on Twitter
Critical to your Twitter success are your followers. Do you follow people who can help your business? Are your followers the best candidates for your business? You can use any of the free software tools, like Tweet Search to sort and focus on the right group of people for your digital network.
If you are looking for people interested in blogging, use the search process to find them. Looking for followers in a localized area, use a search term for that area. Run these software programs on a regular basis to keep your network fresh with the best group of people for your Twitter network.
What’s Your Twitter Agenda?
Before you engage on Twitter, write down you business purposes for using Twitter. What do you want to accomplish with Twitter? When you have a purpose and a focus, you use Twitter more productively. When you have an agenda, Twitter is not time consuming.
Being Clear About Your Business
Social media sites expose small business weaknesses. Twitter is no exception. Your Twitter activity is 140 characters or less. You need to be absolutely clear about what your business does, how you do it and who is your best customers. Your Twitter followers need this clarity!
I use this helpful exercise. I sit down and write up 24 one line statements about my business, what I do, the benefits I provide, how I do my business, who is my best customers. I take the best of these statements and use them to create my Twitter bio. I take the 24 statements and using a free scheduler, Futuretweets. I schedule one of these 24 statements for each hour in the day. I repeat this scheduling process on a weekly basis. Now I have a quality set of Tweets expressing the core aspects of my business to my followers. These Tweets bring in new followers.
Be Interested in Others
Use the “interest building” skill with your Twitter network. Be interested in your followers before you start pushing your business. Ask them questions. Respond to their Tweets. Compliment them. Acknowledge your followers on Twitter. Being interested in your followers is critical to building a strong Twitter network. Take the time and make it one of your goals to build this foundation. Don’t skip this step.
Give Before You Get
Twitter requires a giver’s mentality. How can you help your followers? What resources can you share with them? Where can you point them to solutions for their problems? By giving to your followers you will receive in return. It’s the law of the universe!
Twitter Money Is in the Follow Up
Initially, new followers may be curious about a Tweet you made or something they see in your bio. This spark needs a followed up. A Retweet, a Direct Message, a question, an acknowledgment, a compliment will move the spark into a flame. Then continue with more follow up activities. The money is in the follow up.
Twitter Demands Consistent Participation
Twitter demands consistency and participation. How will people get to know you and like you and trust you if you fail to Tweet or respond to their Tweets on a regular basis? This involves a time commitment. You can use software tools to manage your time. Make no mistakes about it. You must bring a consistent participation to your Twitter site. If you are not committed to this consistent participation, Twitter will not help your business.
Twitter’s Power of Networking
On your Twitter site, you may have hundreds if not thousands of followers. The real power comes from the people they know and follow. By clicking on any one of your followers, you can see all of their followers. Click on them and now you opened up many new followers. See people appropriate for your network, click to follow them.
When a follower retweet one of your Tweets, you are now put in front of their followers. This is the viral element of Twitter and the power of networking.
Conclusion
The key to your Twitter network is applying network building blocks and skills. Instead of a physical networking group, you now have a digital networking group not limited by a physical meeting space or a specific meeting time. Twitter is your own personal networking group.
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
Tags: Twitter Networking
November 9th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome! Just received my email regarding this post! You show the how to’s with respect to twitter! Very few people can do this and do it effectively. You should create an e-book with this material. Thanks for sharing.