Last week in our new poll I asked you:
What is the best way to build your business through Twitter?
So far we’ve received some interesting replies which I’ll share below:
- Be real with people
- Don’t “auto-follow” people – only follow those you are interested in knowing
- Only offer value to your readers / followers – no promotional links
- Create a custom profile background
- Direct people to your personal blog which bleeds into your business efforts
- Don’t post too many comments per day
- Keep comments relevant to your business, don’t make it personal
- Give great advice to your followers
- Leverage search.twitter.com
- Use tools like tweetdeck to monitor your keywords
What do you think of the list so far? Do you agree? Can you add anything to the list?
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Follow YoungEntrepreneur.com: click here: Twitter
Evan Carmichael
A great list Evan. I agree with many of the points aside from the following:
- Don’t post too many comments per day
-> I post all the time and have not lost followers or business because of it. People have advised me to put as much as I want out there, and if people want to tune it out, they can, easily (TweetDeck)
- Keep comments relevant to your business, don’t make it personal
-> This one depends on how you are in relation to your brand, and what your brand stand for. At ADS, we stand for collaboration and transparency, in order to enable our customers and succeed. For me transparency goes beyond just business, and getting a little personal doesn’t hurt. I represent my brand, which means people should know who I am, not just my company. Minus the health issues, we all know a lot about Steve Jobs. His getting personal only helped him.
- Only offer value to your readers / followers – no promotional links
-> This depends on the situation as well. We have our products represented on Twitter, which is purely promotional. However, we make it very clear that those Twitter accounts are for promotions only. I also like to direct my followers to other products that may be of help to them in their day-to-day, all of which I don’t get paid for.
Thanks for the list Evan. Keep it coming!
I am new to twitter but I can already see how it would be a very useful tool for any new business. I came across some really cool start ups who have built quite a following on twitter. One of the best ive seen is i360 – a company who makes headbands and beanies with built in headphones so you can eliminate those annoying wires when you ski or work out.. check them out at ithreesixty.com
I have to agree with Robert, I think you should tweet away and sometimes share personal stuff. People want to know YOU, not just get business information all of the time.
I also do an auto-follow because I don’t want to spend my days looking at the people following me to see if they are interesting enough to follow back. You can always un-follow someone if they aren’t up your alley.
Most of all, have fun with this!