More on Twitter for business

There has been a number of posts on the above over the past months and the jury still seems to be out.

Although this year may see it and some of its siblings come of age!

How does it work?

I am often asked how it works and what should you do to generate business from it? When they say generate business it’s an another way of saying how can they get sales using it.

In the question there is an unsaid desire that all you need to do it open an account, post a few tweets and wait for the sales to roll in. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy and it is not a panacea for generating sales.

This is a link to a Linkedin discussion titled Social Media for Business is CRAP! and it has generated over 1,300 comments so there is a lot of mileage in it yet.

Functions not as a billboard more like a cocktail party!

The first thing to understand is that it is not an advertising medium (if you want or need to advertise use Adwords or a similar service). The category it sits in is Social Media and the term gives a clue to its use.

It can be used to build your brand image, communicate with customer both current and potential and building a relationship with them. Using it simply to broadcast special offers, links to products etc won’t bring the desired sales.

No immediate or sudden increase in sales

There is no easy and simple way to market your business and every technology you use takes planning, monitoring, measuring and modifying to fully derive every bit of benefit it can provide.

And, that requires an allocation and input of resources be they financial, time or both. If you don’t or can’t even the more traditional marketing methods will fail and result in just another cost to the business rather than the investment they were intended to be.

Twitter and the other Social Media platforms are no different.

Using Twitter (part 1)

The short video below (5min) gives an overview of how to get started and some tactics when starting out.

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