Twitter is an absolutely amazing online business tool, and it has, on several occasions, staggered a little bit under the weight of its explosive growth – and occasionally, when a major news break happens, “tweeters” from around the world spring forward and crash their servers. It’s tough to think of anything that has had such an awesome growth curve as this up and coming social networking platform. Twitter didn’t exist at the beginning of 2006, yet today it’s ranked as the 25th most important website in the world by a number of visitors, and it has many millions of active followers.
Twitter does break the usual trends somewhat, insofar as anything to do with social networking has an established “trend” of course. Twitter allows you to post messages, either through a web portal or on your mobile phone, letting everyone know what you think, where you are or what you’re doing. Your message is restricted to 140 characters or less, so it’s always succinct. You have the choice of picking who you want to interact with, and who you want to see – known as “followers” or “following” in the domain of Twitter.
At this still early point of its development, Twitter doesn’t really have any kind of online business model in place. You can sign up in just moments and start “tweeting” your messages for free. Marketers take a good look at the viral capabilities afforded by the service and start to salivate. All sorts of amazing opportunities await those who work toward harnessing Twitter’s incredible power.
Twitter is ideal for communicating news or interacting with your peers. You can send a message directly from your mobile phone using one of the currently available applications, without even having to visit a computer. It’s difficult to estimate the actual number of users because of the fluid nature of the platform, but many experts do caution that the number of avid users, or those who actively follow and get followed, represents a very small proportion of the total user base.
Even though the actual number of really active users might be only a few percent of the total users, the Twitter platform can still be seen as having really great marketing potential. Internet marketers should choose to solicit their followers with caution. Whatever your niche may be, the first thing which you should do is to find other experts who are particularly active “tweeters”. You can do this quite easily by using a simple search inside the Twitter program. Once you locate these experts, take some time and apply yourself to figuring out what kind of followers they’re going after, because your job is to work toward adding friends or followers to your Twitter feed in a strategic and consistent manner.
As it appears that the vast majority of members do not actively keep up with Twitter, it follows that there is no point in adding followers without trying to qualify them. If you can see that the potential follower has an active list of people who he or she is following and, in turn, is being followed by, then they are potential targets for you.
Work toward building a list of followers by first following people who you suspect might have an interest in your specific products or services. If you’ve properly qualified them and you discover that they’ve followed you in return, then you’re on your way.
While you might just simply include your information in the profile supplied by Twitter, most experts will recommend that you also create some sort of banner or template instead of using a stock wallpaper background. This should include your branding, logo and message and it’s something that all serious marketers maintain.
As is the case with any form of Internet marketing or website development, make sure that you do not spam and that your messages are always relevant, informative and/or entertaining. There’s always a time and a place for your marketing message, and when you do use it, you should always do it a subtle fashion. Happy Tweeting!
Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!
