Networking Now

Should you jump on board the worldwide phenomenon that is Twitter? What can it do for you? Perhaps, like me a few months ago, you just don’t ‘get’ Twitter.

So what is special about this 140 character medium? I confess when I first considered it when my business started earlier this year I wasn’t convinced. 140 characters was no good to me, if I wanted to see what my friends were doing I could go on Facebook. But, biting the bullet, I signed up and started reading articles and advice about Twitter.

Twitter is amazing, I am a true convert, in fact, I confess to being slightly addicted to it. I now have a circle of friends and networking contacts on Twitter who make me laugh, inspire me, educate me, entertain me and assist me in growing my business. To me that is the essence of Twitter.

Some people have one account for their business and another for their personal comments. It’s a personal choice. I have one account which I use for both. One thing to be aware of is that whatever you Tweet can be read by a worldwide audience, including your clients, so if you wouldn’t say it to their face don’t say it on Twitter.

To me, the importance of Twitter followers is not the number of followers you have, but rather the quality of your following. What’s the point of having thousands of followers if you don’t have time to interact with them? Some people seem to think that a high number of followers represents some kind of status symbol; it doesn’t work that way for me.

There are lots of training opportunities available to help with your Twitter experience. I chose to subscribe to Tweetmentor, a 100 day course via email run by @NikkiPilkington. In a couple of paragraphs a day she opened my eyes to Twitter and how I can make it work for me.

I digress, this was supposed to be about why you should give Twitter a try. Since using Twitter:

· I’ve found new suppliers

· won new Clients

· gained so much from the blogs and articles freely shared by the people I follow, including winning over £5,000
of business coaching and support from a competition mentioned on there.

· helped fellow Tweeters with their requirements

· realised there are people in my own village and town that I hadn’t known were there before

· received coaching from @EfficiencyCoach, and have even been invited to be part of a teleseminar she is running
for start up businesses.

I know of several success stories where new business can directly be attributed to Twitter. With the help of Twitter, I am moving my business to the next level.

Have a look if you aren’t already using it and see where it can take you.

Could not agree more, since taking it semi-seriously I have had a lot more work from it, even 2 celebs, and another waiting proofing, so read Helen's post well, take it onboard and jump on the good ship Twitter!

Just created a sub-category under Twitter where you can list your Twitter name or Twitter follow recommendations.

Helen,

A very good post, thanks. I'm relatively new to Twitter so just getting the hang of it. Installed 'tweetdeck' earlier today and slowly trying to force myself to do more. I may not find a lot of business on Twitter due to what I do but the connections are great and different to Facebook. It will also come in very handy later on when I get get round to writing some e-books that I have planned, as I should be able to get them out to a greater audience.

I'm looking forward to finding out more about Twitter and what I can do with it over the coming months.

Sean

Have a look at Hootsuite as well, it's a great piece of kit and allows you to have more than one profile and to schedule tweets. It also has a handy stats facility so if you tweet a url that you have shortened with their hootlet tool it will give you feedback on how many people clicked on that link etc. That will be really useful to you when you start promoting your e-books.

hlsbs wrote:Have a look at Hootsuite as well, it's a great piece of kit and allows you to have more than one profile and to schedule tweets. It also has a handy stats facility so if you tweet a url that you have shortened with their hootlet tool it will give you feedback on how many people clicked on that link etc. That will be really useful to you when you start promoting your e-books.

Fantastic, thanks for the heads up on hootsuite, it looks an interesting tool.

I love Twitter. I have met and tweet to some very cool people. Out of all the Social Networking mediums, Twitter has to be the best, though at times, its 140 character limit gets pretty frustrating.

I do on the other hand think that Twitter needs to do more to to stop the spam and the likes of 'Britney', but other than that its great. For people that is new to twitter, there's a safety guide on my site to help with some of the dangers. But don't let that spoil your tweeting experience.

Twitter has changes the way we communicate, and its a brilliant tool and resource.

Loving Twitter at the minute, very vogue, and that HootSuite is great when sending a link out (4 accounts at once) but for normal use its either the blackberry UberTwitter app or good old Twitter in a normal browser (by normal I do not mean IE!)

I guess there are a few apps or browser run programs now to look after you tweets, luckily 95% of the people I follow and that follow me are all very human, I tend to remove the ones that are just API all day, i like people not robots, hence not marrying a fem-bot but a real life woman! (Honestly)

I am just wondering what will be next and what domain I should buy now :)

This is an automated response ;)

I am sick of the spam followers on Twitter and cleanse my followers every so often, whilst I may not follow all of them back who am I to say that they don't get something out of following me so some are on there that are not reciprocal.

However, if all I get from your profile is a half naked skinny image, something promising get rich quick, white teeth or hundreds of followers I will block you. I do this because I don't want any one to look at my profile and believe that I support these causes. It's not why I go on Twitter.

I don't want 1000's of followers at the click of a button. They are the wrong type of followers. I would rather have fewer but quality.

In terms of the limitations of the 140 characters, blog it. If you have something to say then write a blog or short article on your website. Twitter a link to it with some sort of idea what the link is for and you then have traffic to your website as well. Use a link shortener such as hootlet (Hootsuite) which will give you feedback on how may clicks the link had, this helps you find the times and headlines that work best for you.

The other advice I would offer is be courteous to other users. This weekend I have seen some pretty nasty tweets which were really uncalled for. You only get 140 characters, don't waste it with swearing, it turns people off.

There are a lot of things I have wanted to say this weekend in response to some Tweets but I have exercised caution. Remember, whatever you tweet can be picked up by Google and appear in other places. What may seem witty after that drink or two may appear rude and insensitive when taken out of context on a google search result.

If you only use Twitter for your personal use then fine, but don't risk ruining your good business name with a drunken or inappropriate comment.

Helen, I admitted to being a Twitterholic before we started following each other.

You outshine me my friend!

Twitter is an amazing concept, I can't image life without it now :D

Best Regards,
http://twitter.com/@ToniHunter