Every day I teach, consult or I'm interviewed about business blogging and social marketing. Inevitably twitter comes up since it's the hot tool of the day. Usually someone asks why in the heck they should use twitter and isn't it just a waste of time. No, I say. It's actually a very powerful tool for driving traffic to your blog, building relationships, doing real time research and creating amazing visibility and global reach. Right now, it can't be beat for attracting leads and driving them to your home base (blog!).
If you are using twitter for your business, then you need to use it effectively. My friend David Perdew, over at the My Twitter Toolbox Gold Membership site, shared the top ten ways to improve twitter productivity. Below are the first five. Tomorrow I'll post 6 through the 10.
What began as a fun and innovative way to achieve social networking has quickly become an easy and helpful tool for promoting businesses, both small and large.If you are already using Twitter for your business, then you will want to look for ways to improve your productivity. How can you be more productive with a site that only allows you to type one hundred forty characters? Here are 5 of the top 10 ways to improve your time on the Twitterverse.
1. Sort out your followers. You can find applications that will allow you to separate the people you follow and tweet to into separate groups. This way, you can have a group for your friends, your family, business connections, and more. With these separate groups, you can focus your business related tweets on the right people.
2. Tweet and tweet often. You cannot be very productive with Twitter if you do not dedicate time to it. One way to get many followers is to tweet as often as you possibly can. By doing this, you will have more of a chance of people noticing you and following you.
3. Send useful messages. Tweeting often does not mean sending the same messages over and over. If potential followers see that you never post anything new, then they may not follow you. While you want to tweet as quickly as possible, make sure you are tweeting something worth reading.
4. Include links, but make them short. There are plenty of applications that will allow you to shorten your links to save a great deal of room. Make sure that you always use a link-shortening tool to make the most of every tweet you send.
5. Know when to step away. Of course, you do not need to spend all of your time on Twitter. Remember that you do not need to neglect the other parts of your business. Make sure that you devote enough time to all of your business areas.
If you'd like to see a video introduction of the top 20 Twitter tools, visit My Twitter Toolbox.
And be sure to catch the next 5 ways to build a better life using Twitter in tomorrow's installment.
Happy tweeting...follow me on twitter for business blogging and social media tips and resources...DeniseOnTwitter.com
