10 Ways to use Twitter to Market your business

Note:  This is a blog I read but it's so good I wanted to share on my website.

Twitter is an excellent internet marketing tool when used correctly. These 10 ways to use Twitter will help you get the results you are looking for. It will take some time to build up your followers so don’t look at Twitter as a quick fix.

1. The best way to gain followers on Twitter is by sharing information that is valuable and/or entertaining. If you send your followers to crappy articles they will unfollow you or just ignore your posts altogether.  Either way you lose.  

2. Another way to use Twitter is by using hashtags to get your tweets seen by more people. I need to do a better job of this. But you also have the other extreme of an entire tweet being nothing but hashtags.

See how the most popular people you follow use hashtags.

3. Twitter can be great way to get traffic to your blog or website. I share links to my blog everyday. The key is you just can’t send tweets that always send people to your blog or website.

Mix it up. Send readers to articles on other sites and blogs.

Find things to tweet about other than just your niche every now and then.

4. Reply to as many tweets of people that follow you as you can. If they ask you a question be sure to follow up. Reply to the tweets of popular Twitter users. If you reply with something interesting and others read it you can pick up additional followers.

5. Some business people connect their Twitter account to their LinkedIn account. I have not personally done that. I like to keep my stuff separate.

I don’t want everything I put Twitter to show up on LinkedIn or vice versa. Just me being such a private person. I don’t connect Twitter to Facebook either for the same reason. You have to decide how you want to do this.

6. I touched on this a little bit earlier but always respond to anyone that responds to your messages. I check the connect tab to see if anyone has responded to my tweets at least once a day.

I am also looking to see who retweeted my tweets. I try to send a thank you to as many as I can. That way hopefully they will retweet some more of my stuff. Having your tweets retweeted is a great way to gain a few followers.

7. You want to make it clear to everyone that you are a real person. You can do this by following up and retweeting. Also you can use Twitter to let people know about seminars and workshops that are happening online and offline.

8. Don’t always be about business on Twitter. Check Google News to see if there are some interesting things to let your followers know about. Quotes are always good. Everyone likes quotes.

I do book reviews on my blog and I will take interesting quotes from the books and use them on Twitter.

9. Don’t go crazy tweeting. I will unfollow someone in a heartbeat that sends out 10 tweets in a minute or two. Usually these are promoting 10 different products. It’s crazy, don’t do that.

I can’t give you the correct number to send out each day because there is not one. But 10 tweets in a minute is not the way to do it.

For one thing you want as many people as possible to see your tweets. The best way to do this is to space your tweets out. People are using Twitter at different times of the day.

10. One last tool to that I have started using lately is Just Retweet. There is a free and paid version JustRetweet. Doesn’t matter which one you use. You can get people to retweet your tweets based on a points system. You can get points by retweeting other people’s tweets or you can buy points.

Just go check it out. I have picked up lots of new followers since I started using it. But don’t retweet crazy stuff just to get points.

There are probably many other ways to use Twitter that I have missed. There are a ton of paid tools you can use. I have about 15,000 followers and I got most of them the old fashioned way, one at a time.

Following others… Putting out good tweets…Getting them to follow me from my blog…retweeting other tweets… getting other people to retweet me, etc.

Good luck!

4 Reasons why being at the top of the search engines does not mean new customers

We're all conditioned to being told that our company has to be on page one of the search engines or  we're wasting our money.  And don't get me wrong I totally believe you need to be there if you're going to take your business seriously; but what if you're there and you're not seeing new customers as a result of that.  What's going on?  I spent all that money and NOTHING!  Well let's examine a few key reasons why that could be happening.

1.  Your website is awful!

You have misspelled words, outdated content, broken links and just poorly done.  Folks, you may be the best at what you do and people may flock to check you out but if this is what they see how serious are they going to take you?  And if they're not taking you serious why should they?  If you're not going to put a little effort and money in the most powerful marketing piece you have don't expect results.  We're in a new age and people look at websites for information.

2.  Too much time goes by before you call them back!

Ok you've got them.  They're calling or emailing you wanting to know more about your product or service but you wait 3 or 4 days before you get back to them.  I know for many of you this sounds crazy but it happens.  And for those of you who use the excuse "Well we've just been so busy I haven't had a chance to return calls or emails" don't expect much growth for your business.  That is about as poor of an excuse as you can give a potential customer.  If you're that busy HIRE SOMEONE!  Come on people!  We're not going to wait that long just because you're at the top of the search engines, the BBB gives you an A plus rating and Uncle Fred says you're the best.  There are other options out there that will call me back that day and here's a little secret.  They're just as good as you are.

3.  Not using social media at all!

Well, Ron, I just don't have time for that and I'm doing fine without it.  Sound familiar?  Nowadays people will go a little further to check you out than just your website.  They'll look at your Facebook page to see what others are saying.  They'll look at your Link'd In profile to see how well your connected and how many recommendations are there.  And if you're not using these simple and free tools a few minutes a day your competitors will eventually crush you.  Even Walmart and McDonalds use these tools.  Is your business bigger and better than these giants?  5 to 10 minutes a day and watch what happens.

4.  Bad Reviews!

"Now wait a minute, Ron, there's nothing I can do about that!"  There's not?  This is where engaging your customers with social media or writing a blog can really be helpful.  Folks, we're all going to have upset customers that may write bad reviews; buy you know what.  We can respond to that nasty post on our Facebook page.  We can respond to that bad Tweet.  The internet has made it much easier to respond to negative criticism and you better use it.  Calling an upset customer is still a great idea but don't neglect the other part of that.  Just remember, if they wrote a negative post about your business but you called them and resolved it the hundreds of people that saw that post don't know that.

There you have it.  Sounds simple but you'd be surprised how many businesses don't follow these simple tips.  And if you don't it can and probably will come back and you bite you.  So embrace the new age and use these tools.  They'll help you far more than they'll hurt you if you use them right.