By Amanda Bala

Twitter.  We all have heard of it and many people are out there tweeting on a daily basis.  Are you?  Have you been thinking about getting on Twitter, but do not know where to begin.  Are you already signed up, but do not know what to do?  Here are a few helpful hints to get tweeting!

Many people think that Twitter is just a silly, gossip site that will not help them at all in their business.  This could not be further from the truth.  Twitter can help you to get your name out there in the simplest way; by talking to people.  Twitter has the ability to engage in instant conversation with people all over the country.  It helps build relationships with people and gets them interested in who you are and what you do.

The first step to making your tweeting work is to be personable.  On Twitter, people are not interested in hearing a sales pitch.  They want conversation.  They want friendship.  Don’t talk business.  Be true and tweet interesting information.  Be engaging and show them that you are invested in what they have to say.  This helps you to build relationships with your target audience.

The next thing you want to do when Tweeting is to give people something to talk about.  Make your tweets fun or funny.  Pose thought provoking questions or even be controversial.  These are the types of things that make people interested in what it is you have to say.  These are the kinds of tweets that will get people talking to you and also about you.

When using Twitter, you need to update a lot.  This may seem tedious, but it does not need to be.  You can use quotes as your tweets.  You can link to blogs or interesting articles.  Or when lost for an original tweet, you can always retweet something that someone else has put on Twitter.  The idea is, the more tweets you add, the more people will see you and start to listen to what you are saying.

Finally, use the tools Twitter offers to you.  Link your website to your Twitter page.  You have the option of adding buttons, badges and widgets to sections of your other sites.  This gives your visitors the opportunity to tweet your content.  You can link your articles, blogs, etc. to a button that allows anyone to send out an update linking back to your page.  You can also use the @reply feature that Twitter offers.  This is a great way to see who is discussing you and your brand.  The Twitter search function is another good tool to find out who is talking about you.  Be sure to take advantage of what is being offered on the site.

By using the wonderful world of Twitter, you are creating a personal, one on one relationship with people who can be potential clients.  You can use this to gain interest in who you are, thus generating traffic to your website and converting that traffic to leads and sales.  This is your chance to share your expertise and show people how good you are at what you do!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.