What’s Next After Twitter?
A humorous look at what could be coming next when we get tired of Twitter (will we? really?)
What is Twitter?
More and more online businesses are getting wind of the fact that an increasing number of successful entrepreneurs are singing the praises of Twitter. But still they’re not sure what it is or how to go about utilizing it.
So every day we get asked ‘what is Twitter?’
Essentially, as Twitter says itself, it is a microblogging application. This means that users are invited to register free of charge and post regular micro blogs or ‘tweets’ of 140 characters or less. To get you started Twitter invites you to tell everyone what you’re doing. Those who follow that advice usually fail miserably at a meteoric rate within the Twitter Village.
Those who go on to accrue a considerable following and to create their own vibrant little Twitter communities are those who realize that, for the most part, people aren’t interested in exactly what you’re doing. But if you Tweet about your latest discoveries online such as resources that everyone can use, or if you give away free niche advice that is useful to your followers, you’ll quickly make a name for yourself, and more importantly you can use Twitter successfully to build your business.
Mark that well, for if you want to unlock Twitter’s many benefits, you must first give to the community. Once you’re trusted you will be able to:
- Keep track of latest industry developments
- Follow what’s being said about you or your clients
- Get the word out about your goods and services (as long as you do it subtly and not in an aggressively promotional way)
- Get traffic for your website
- Learn about products, services and applications that will help your business
- If you know how to find the right people, Twitter will allow you build a valuable network quicker than you ever could in real time. Here is a great list of Twitter tools to help you grow your network.
- If you offer real value in your tweets (valuable links, news, and niche information) you will quickly gain a following that will welcome your information including marketing approaches, as long as you’re not pushy and repetitive, and as long as your followers consider that you have earned the right to pitch to them.
- You can use Twitter to conduct market research: ask your followers for their opinions and find out how popular your ideas/products are.
- Find some really great joint venture partners on Twitter and be able to check them out pretty effectively beforehand.
- Find great people to fill just about any post you have in mind covering the whole hiring spectrum.
- Keep abreast of important economic, business and even niche news. Most of the time you can get it even before it breaks if you’re networked with the right Twitter members.
- You can use Twitter very effectively to notify your customers of all sorts of things like special offers, new products or whatever else you have in mind. Just take a look at how Dell has used Twitter in exactly this way to raise 1 million in revenue during 2008.
Why has Twitter been so successful? Because it’s so versatile. Twitter can, essentially, be anything you want it to be online as long as you bear in mind the guidelines above. It’s useful for just about any community online and it can be used across a wide selection of platforms, including iPhone and SMS. To add to its ease of use and popularity, literally thousands of applications have been created to make your use of Twitter more effective and more enjoyable.
Next we’ll take a look at some of those applications.
Twitter Releases Widgets at Last!
A bit late in the day really, since most of us have already managed to add our Twitter stream to a variety of websites, but now you can get the official Twitter Widgets to proclaim your Twitter love to the world.
How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business
There’s lots of talk on Twitter and on the Internet at large about people who have successfully used Twitter to grow their business.
Because I know you’re dying to know, here are some of the ways Twitter can be used to do just that:
Have You Made Your @shortyawards Nominations Yet?
If you’re a serious Twitter user you simply must take the time to nominate your favorite Tweeters for the @shortyawards of your choice. You can either pick categories that already exist such as #humor for example, or you can create your own categories to nominate your favorite Tweeps.
Be aware though, that if there aren’t enough nominations to your category the @shortyawards admin reserve the right to remove that category.
