Using Twitter for your business can be an important way of expanding your network as an entrepreneur, which may increase traffic to your website, help you discover new opportunities for your business and build your brand. Here are some tips on how to effectively harness the power of your Twitter network for your business.
Tweet for more traffic
Twitter is a great way to promote your business and new blog posts.
By consistently tweeting about your business actions and announcing your blog posts, you will easily keep your followers up to date about your business, and gain the advantage of being transparent about your business activities. Keeping statistics on how many people click on your links through tracking programs such as bitly.com is also a great way to test out which kind of posts are more popular and what times of day your links are most clicked on.
Tweet to promote your expertise
Twitter can be effective in promoting your expertise in an area and establishing yourself as an expert, through consistently tweeting about the industry you wish to be identified with. Sharing interesting articles other authors have written about issues in your area of expertise will contribute to building your personal brand. The added bonus of promoting your expertise via Twitter is that plenty of your industry peers are more likely to find you and connect with you. Re-tweeting or sharing articles is also sure to gain you new contacts as the authors are often inclined to thank you for the re-tweet or share.
Tweet for dialogue & engagement
Twitter is a great way to get a hold of your audience and directly ask them what they think, what they need help with or how they deal with issues. Sort of like a mini interview that will in the end help you gain more exposure. By asking your audience questions you are directly engaging them in dialogue and building your brand value. If your audience is willing to tell you what their problems are or how they solve issues you have a great way of creating more relevant content with proven ways of solving the problem in focus.
Tweet to make new important alliances
The opportunities for making new alliances with other business owners are endless. Through Twitter, I have found new interesting entrepreneurs, websites and communities I didn’t know about, people who were interested in actively promoting me, guest blogging opportunities and a private entrepreneur support group (aka. a mastermind group). As long as you remember to treat people on Twitter as human beings (say hello!), you will start making new interesting contacts. A really good system to put into practice is clicking on the interesting person’s website and finding something to comment about, so you aren’t just writing “Thanks for the follow!” or “Hi!”. If you can find something that makes your comment more personal (“Your article was great because….” or “Love the colors on your website”) people are more open to starting a conversation with you and following back.
Tweet for new opportunities & to discover new interesting prospects
Lots of people on Twitter are daily posting about new job opportunities, discounts, etc. Being on Twitter at the right (lucky) time can help you discover new interesting prospects, for example your next client.
There’s plenty of small business gurus also announcing their webinars on Twitter.
Keeping track of new webinars also leads to great opportunities to network with other small businesses and entrepreneurs, and learn a lot of free tips to help you run your business more effectively.
Image credits: Victor Habbick & nokhoog_buchachon (freedigitalphotos.net)
3 thoughts on “How to harness the power of your Twitter network”