Why You're On Twitter (And What You Can Do About It!)

As more and more businesses join Twitter in hopes of finding the same success businesses before them have found, many are left wondering why they even bothered to join the social networking site in the first place.

You are on Twitter to promote your business, and hopefully sell your products or services along the way. That is the simple truth. The problem is that many businesses only get as far as wanting it, without seeing any actual results.

Sure we've all seen the news stories that talk about the success some businesses have seen, it is very inspiring. Unfortunately these articles don't share the whole truth. In reality these businesses had to put effort into spreading the word. Joining and hoping people will find you is not good enough.

Now that you know why you're on Twitter and what you want from it, you need to learn how to put your goals into action.

Step 1: Follow people with interests that are related to your products or service.

By taking the time to seek out and follow people with an interest in your area of business, you will be putting yourself in front of your target market. Before they decide to follow you back, they will be looking at your profile and considering what it is you have to offer. If they like what they see, they will follow you. One targeted follow has the potential to turn into one new customer. Unlike traditional advertising, the only cost to you is your time.

Step 2: Setup a search feed to keep track of any mentions of your business, direct competitors, and for talk about your niche.

You should always keep track of what people are saying about you on the web, Twitter is no different. This will allow you to directly communicate with people that are pleased or possibly unsatisfied with your business. For that reason alone, this step is very important.

But why would you want to know when people are talking about your competition? If they are your competition, that means they offer a service similar to yours. If what they're selling is similar and someone was interested enough to mention it, they are now a prospect. That gives you the opportunity to swoop in and follow them. You never know when you might turn a competitor's unsatisfied customer into your happy customer.

Lastly, you should have a feed for talk about the niche your business or product fills. This is a lot like step one where you seek out and follow people with similar interests, except a feed will keep you up to date as people post messages about the topic rather than what they only have in their bio. Consider it a form of live action following.

Step 3: Unfollow people who don't follow back in a reasonable period of time. Follow back those who follow you.

Unfortuantely Twitter has a limit on how many people you may follow, depending on how many people are following you. Since not everyone you follow is going to follow back, you must organize your list accordingly. If you don't clear out some of the people in a timely manner, you will not be able to follow some new, fresh prospects later.

You also need to return follow those who have followed you. They're obviously interested in your business, give them a reason to stick around by returning the favor.

Step 4: Provide customer service.

Remember how I mentioned you should keep track of what people are saying about you on Twitter? You should use that feed to also offer customer service when someone has a problem. By simply offering a little support, you can turn a potential customer relations problem into a positive experience. Furthermore, this will also give your customer a good reason to spread the word about your business.

Step 5: Do not use auto DMs to message new followers, that's just annoying.

This is an issue that has been split down the middle for as long as I can remember. Some people support the use of auto DMs, others do not. In some cases there are people who use auto DMs but don't even like receiving them!

While they have good intentions, auto DMs are usually spammy and many people treat the people who send them as such.

If you really want to take a moment to introduce yourself to a new follower, send them a personalized DM or simply send them an @reply.

Step 6: Don't retweet your own messages too often.

You're on Twitter to promote your business. There is a good chance that your followers want the coupon codes and promotion announcements. They probably do not want to see the same promotion mentioned 10 times a day.

Try to limit how often you repeat yourself.

Step 7: Keep your followers updated on a regular basis.

If you're hoping to attract new customers, you'll want to tweet at least once a day.

Tweeting regularly won't be hard to do if you're offering customer support through your account. If you're only updating when there is a new promotion or coupon available to the public, it might be hard to keep your followers, well, following what you say.

At the very least, show your followers that there is a real human behind the business. Talk about milestones you reach as you reach them. Mention what you've done lately to keep your business running. Receive a shipment of a new product? Tweet about it. It's not hard to forget that there is someone behind a company, this is a great way to show customers that you are a real person.