Time to Tweet on Twitter | What Now?

So many people I talk too are confused about Twitter; and sometimes me too! What can you really do with Twitter? Tweet real time news and information I know, and crikeyCNN and the BBC are on it so it must be good! Really; what the harried business owner wants to know is how do I make Twitter work for me? There really are limited hours in the day for tweeting. Well it can be successful.

What any business needs is a strategy to take the twitter efforts and turn them into real quantifiable results. If you are on twitter you understand already that unless you have a large following then it all seems pretty redundant. Getting a large following is an art in itself.

Firstly you need a solid Twitter foundation. Essential is a professional looking Twitter background. You can customize your background with a company feel. The benefits you provide and of course; most important a Call to Action (CTA). Your background is really like a website and should provide phone number and website address. Its okay to test a couple of backgrounds to see what works best.

I already here the groans…. not more work! It’s okay – there are time management tools and a number of ways to lighten the load. I recommend a few free tools to start: Ping.fm(post from anywhere to anywhere), SocialOomph.com (lots of useful tools) and of courseHootsuite (a social media dashboard). Remember taking an hour or so to program 50 tweets can save time in the long run. I guess by now you are understanding – “If you don’t work for Twitter; Twitter don’t work for you!”

So now you have started a strategy and measurement is critical, quite simply, if you don’t measure you don’t know what works. Previously mentioned Hootesuite provides the ability to measure results from your Twitter account and if you include Google Analyticsyou can measure:

1. Visits to your website
2. Average Time on site from Twitter Visitors
3. Number of page views by each visitor
4. % of first time visitors
5. TRACK CONVERSIONS this is where the money is better know.

Remember Twitter is in the “New Marketing” model of permission so being to salesy will not help. Give freely and engage. The secret of Twitter’s success is realizing that folks don’t want to use the Web for private conversations but public ones. Nearly 90% of Twitter users make their updates public, so everyone can read them.

It encourages other people to see what we are saying, its not about doing one-to-one e-mail or instant messages anymore. it is about communicating with one another in an open way. Twitter is about keeping in touch and making the world smaller.

If you would like to know more about how to drive your business with Twitter visit Best of Professionals.