Part 2: Networking Using Twitter

Why Twitter?  Believe it or not, your interests, desires, talents are actually important and interesting to others in the world.  Twitter limits you to 140 characters to express whatever you want through what is called a ‘tweet’. So why should I use this service? Read on…

Why should I be active on both Facebook and Twitter?

• It’s even easier and faster to build a following with twitter than it is with Facebook.

• Only view ‘tweets’ from specific people and topics you find interesting and informative.

• More of an instant communication with people. Think of it as your own public and private mini instant email.

• Twitter is like a fire hose of morsel size information coming constantly at you. Keeping the tweets limited to a certain number of characters forces users to think about the most important point they want to share rather than being able to blab on and on finally getting to a point later in a paragraph robbing us of our time.

How to network using twitter:

• Search and find people to add using either search.twitter.com or tweetgrid.com

• Type out and send a personal DM or use socialoomph.com to automatically send your DM to connect more and also increase the likelihood they will follow you back.

• Make sure your Twitter bio description has specific keywords that explain your services.  People can find you this way using tweepsearch.com

• Use TweetDeck to communicate.

• Categorize your twitter friends in columns with TweetDeck

• Create relationships with your community by @ replying to questions and comments.

Even though Facebook has come closer to developing more of a platform like twitter by having a ‘view live feed’ and ‘view news feed’ options it is still has yet to reach the same functionality as twitter. Imagine if you had a following of 40,000 people on Twitter and you finished a new article for your website. Don’t you think some people out of the 40,000 followers you have on Twitter would be interested in what you wrote about? Send out a tweet with a short description and link to your article. BAM! You have traffic. Powerful isn’t it! As you build a relationship with your followers you are on your way to creating ‘community’. Anyone looking to build a community, learn from others, brand themselves or their company should be using Twitter.

And, some of those Twitter connections may just end up with some visibility out in the real world.  One of my client’s has gotten 3 interviews and a webinar just in the last few months:  a nationally syndicated radio show out of Minneapolis,  International interview out of Australia, web interview for a company in California and a co-hosted webinar with a local attorney who shares here niche.  With the exception of the local attorney, she would not have met any of them without the power of Twitter.

Some time saving Twitter Tools:

http://www.socialoomph.com – Schedule automatic direct messages to people that follow you.

http://www.hootsuite.com – Schedule your tweets in advance. Also track clicks.

http://www.ping.fm – Blast out one message to all your social media platforms at once.

http://tweetgrid.com – Search multiple key words at once. Showing tweets going out at that moment with your keyword/keywords. ( I like to use the 1 x 3 grid)

http://tweepsearch.com – Search specifically Twitter Profile & Bio’s