8 Ways To Use Twitter To Grow Your Business

Are you tweeting? If so you may be wondering if its really paying you back for the time and effort you put into it. I must say I wondered the same thing when I started but now Im grateful I stuck with it, because its become an indispensible business building tool.

Just like anything else in your business if you have a clear strategy youll get better results. Just randomly tweeting doesnt accomplish much and youll find followers clicking the un-follow button. Instead figure out how you want to use this versatile tool and what type of results youre hoping to get.

10 ways

1. Build relationships
oUse tools like tweetdeck (its free) that help you divide followers into groups or categories so you can interact with the people with whom you really want to form relationships.
oRe-tweet the interesting tweets of people you respect and follow
oReply to their requests or relevant tweets
oMix in some personal information thats fun so you show people youre human and have a life. This does not mean posting what you had for lunch!

2. Build your expert status
oPost links to valuable information, blog posts, videos, web pages. Follow leaders in your industry who have many more followers.
oRespond to their posts and build a relationship with them. Each time your tweet appears in their twitter stream, their followers see you.
oTweet live from events where you speak or that you attend and let people know whats happening in real time.
oTell your followers about your success with clients
oBuild relationships with subscribers who are not yet clients

3. Find joint venture partners
Follow people who have the type of clients you want or who offer products you think your subscribers and clients would buy. Build relationships with those people and approach them about a joint venture if it would be a win-win situation

4. Educate about your products or services
Notice I said educate, not sell. You can gently tell your followers about upcoming offers or send them to a preview video or blog post, but absolutely no heavy sales language. Offering your followers special time-sensitive deals for them only is a great approach.

5. Surveys-find out what people want

6. Customer support or questions
You can answer customer questions or let them contact you through Twitter if they have a problem and need help

7. Press releases
Let followers know when something exciting happens at your company by tweeting about it and linking them to a press release

8. Strengthen relationships with current clients and subscribers.
Brag about your best clients. Re-tweet what they have to say and support their efforts on Twitter as much as possible.

Of course there are even more ways to use Twitter. Its also important to set up your Twitter feed to be imported onto your Facebook wall or fan page, as well as to Linked In. That way Twitter becomes command central for much of your social networking which saves you a lot of time.


Look at the list above and decide how you could best use Twitter to generate traffic to your website or blog and build lasting, loyal fans, and new valuable relationships.