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:
- 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.
A Lesson in How NOT to Use Twitter
Recently we’ve seen a lot of discussion online on how users can improve their networking skills to use social media optimally. There was my post over at Marketing Pilgrim, Why Social Media May Not be Right For You, and some specific tips on how to use Twitter for online succes and this great post about Social Media Community over at Search Engine Watch.
Yesterday all hell broke loose because one fairly new Twitter user decided to apply traditional offline marketing tactics to his Twitter account. Not a wise move as we shall see.
In retrospect I feel for Matt Bacak. In a matter of weeks he got around 2,000 people to follow him (including me), and only followed 32 back. That is really bad form for Twitter. Then, as if this insult to his followers wasn’t enough, he decided to publish a press release about how well he was doing on Twitter. I didn’t even notice it, but a few of my Twitter friends notified me.
Word travels fast on Twitter. We all unfollowed him, and I imagine over the next few days he will see his Twitter balloon rapidly deflate. In fact, word has spread like wildfire throughout the social media communities, proving that these outdated methods don’t work on social media period.
Made me laugh when I saw Matt’s video post on ‘Social Marketing Secrets.’ Obviously he needs to learn a few secrets yet.
Why will his Twitter balloon deflate?
For the following reasons:
- Twitter is not about traditional marketing
- there is no room for arrogance in social media
- when you want something from someone (or a whole bunch of people) you need to at least think about providing some benefit in return–even if it’s just to follow someone back.
- To brag about how fast you’ve promoted yourself on a medium like Twitter is simply to broadcast the fact that you don’t ‘get’ Twitter at all.
Some, perhaps Matt included, would say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and this thing has certainly generated a lot of buzz. But social media is all about establishing trust for your brand, and I don’t think you achieve that when you come over as an arrogant self-promoter who doesn’t care about those who you market with.
Matt, I invite you to come and defend yourself here. I’m prepared to give you space for a post if you’d like. 
