New Poll - What is the best way to build your business through Twitter?

[lelah_jones]

Twitter gives you a fragmented experience of opinions, events, news, ideas and feedback largely because its structured to accommodate non-contextual usability: You can easily follow thousands of users and listen in and enter into conversations conducted among multiple users at any point.

[FoxTopper]

twitter karma, then mass following

[butchtomas]

I would make words very interesting and attractive so that people notice will notice me. Although this process is not simple, it is crucial. I should also consider communicating, greeting and paying respect to my followers and the ones following me.

[mkgen]

I have 741 following and 302 followers. Overall a waste of time.

[wdywft]

there is this website called twiends that let's you build followers...

[avelina]

Just tweet daily about the services and products you are offering with the links of that particular web page providing the related information. To shorten the big links use bit.ly and join the twitter groups similar to your business.

[PromoDirect]

I have read that most of the Twitter clicks to your website are been reflected into 'Direct Traffic', in Google Analytic. It is because we use automated applications, Shortening Link Services, Desktop Application for Twitter etc.

Is there anyone who can put more light on it?

Thanks!

[health4rall]

Using Twitter was a popular choice for many of our readers so this week our new Young Entrepreneur poll is:

What is the best way to build your business through Twitter?

Many entrepreneurs are just coming on to the service and have no idea how to use it. What strategies are working for you? How do you use your time on Twitter to build connections and grow your business?

[WHUK]

There are many ways to market your place with twitter.As the new twitter feature are such that

1. Enable grouping of friends and followers
2. Auto Complete in Tweets
3. Text links in tweets
4. Tweets-threading
5. Allow Tweets directed to a group of people ("group tweet")
6. Display meta data through hover tooltips
7. Use the sidebar more effectively to display information
8. Add a page that displays tweets mentioning your username
9. Highlight specific users, deemphasize others in feed
10. Add a Built-in URL shortener

[jamilv]

The best I have used so far is twiends [dot] com (message me for my referral link and a few vouchers for free points if needed)
I started at 10 followers (all family) and am now at 1900 followers in a total of 35 days, thats with only investing $10 and spending about 5 min a day adding people for points.
If you need some explanation or even want me to set it up for you (they have a publicist option) PM me and I can give you some more info.
I am offering my services with creating your account, setting it up properly for you and getting you followers if you want for a small fee of course ($3 for setup/settings config + cost of follower points).

But aside from all that, it is the site I most recommend for building up a good twitter account for social marketing.
They also have options that can help with promoting your facebook page, website and youtube videos.

[celenajames]

Twitter gives you a fragmented experience of opinions, events, news, ideas and feedback largely because its structured to accommodate non-contextual usability: You can easily follow thousands of users and listen in and enter into conversations conducted among multiple users at any point.

You really explained it so well and it is worth reading so that, I can get some more better ideas and to thus make more followers and getting very effective results.

[AuroINSEO]

Our latest YoungEntrepreneur.com poll is:

What is the best way to build your business through Twitter? Post your comments at our blog at: What is the best way to build your business through Twitter? - Entrepreneur Poll Update (2)

We’ve gotten some amazing responses so far and have one more week left before the poll closes so make sure to get your suggestions in!

To give you some additional inspiration I thought I would share Chris Brogan’s list on 50 ways to use Twitter for Business:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

1. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
2. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
3. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
4. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
5. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
6. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
7. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
8. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
9. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
10. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

1. You don’t have to read every tweet.
2. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
3. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
4. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
5. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
6. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
7. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
8. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
9. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
10. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

1. Twitter takes up time.
2. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
3. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
4. There are other ways to do this.
5. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
6. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
7. Twitter is just for technonerds.
8. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
9. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
10. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

1. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
2. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
3. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
4. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
5. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
6. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
7. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
8. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
9. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
10. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

What do you think of Chris’ list? What would you add? What other advice would you give to other young entrepreneurs who are trying to build their business through Twitter? This is the last week to have your say before we release the results!

Post your comments at our blog at: What is the best way to build your business through Twitter? - Entrepreneur Poll Update (2)

Evan Carmichael

Thanks Evan for sharing such useful informations.

Thanks
SEO New York