Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard of Twitter by now, the social networking and micro-blogging service that has taken the internet by storm. But just what is Twitter, why should i use it and how can it help me or my business? These are some of the questions most frequently asked of me by my clients and colleagues.
Twitter is unique amongst the social networking services in that it allows you to very quickly build up a "following" of like minded people, or people that may be interested in a product or service you're selling. Unlike Facebook, for instance, you don't need to know people in order to follow them or have them follow you. The key to leveraging Twitter lies in the simple fact that roughly 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. It's really that simple, but it's also very powerful.
Think about that for a minute. If you follow 100 people, roughly 40 of those people will follow you back and become a captive and receptive audience for you and your tweets. Well, you might ask, what's the big deal? So I've got 40 people listening to me blabber on about what I do during the day. Well if you have a product or service you are trying to sell, this can be a very powerful marketing tool for two reasons. First of all, it's very easy to grow your Twitter following rapidly so that those 40 followers turn into 400 and then 4000 within a matter of weeks if you know what you're doing. Secondly, you can target these Twitter followers, so that those 400 or 4000 followers of yours are likely to be interested in whatever you're selling.
Say for example you just opened an Italian Restaurant in Chicago and you'd like to attract some new customers. By using the Twitter search function, you can search the text of conversations for keywords like "pasta" or "italian food" etc. AND you can narrow down your search results so that you only see Twitterers who've discussed pasta and Italian food within say a 25 mile radius of Chicago. Now we're talking! So now all you need to do is follow those people and lo and behold, roughly 40% of them will follow you back! Now throughout the course of the day you can occasionally slip in a tweet about your new delicious pasta specials for the evening, or maybe link to a review of your new restaurant, you get the idea. This is an incredibly powerful marketing technique, because you can really laser target your prospects and build up a huge number of followers in a very short time.
The key to making this work smoothly and to build up your followers quickly is to use automation. Luckily there are a number of tools available to help you quickly target and follow Twitterers within your niche. The two I recommend are Bird Feeder and Hummingbird.
The way Hummingbird works, is that you identify other Twitterers with large followings and then follow their followers. So for example, if you're selling baby products, you might try and search for a Twitterer who also sells baby products or who offers advice and guidance to new moms. There's your captive audience right there. So then you launch Hummingbird and use it to follow all the Twitterers who are already following the person offering the advice to new moms. Hummingbird will auto-follow all these people with the click of a button and in just a matter of minutes, you can follow hundreds of Twitterers, with many following you back. Bird Feeder is a bit more sophisticated, in that it allows you to not only follow other Twitterers followers, but also leverages the Twitter search functionality, so that you can (like in our Italian restaurant example) target just people within a certain geographic area who used a certain keyword phrase. Then, like Hummingbird, you can click a button and Bird Feeder will auto-follow just the Twitterers who meet the search criteria you specified.
This is the heart of Twitter marketing. FInd people you want to target, based on your niche or product or service, follow them and then rinse and repeat. You can very quickly build up a massive following of laser targeted Twitterers who are a receptive audience to whatever it is you're trying to market or sell. selling. Unlike Facebook, for instance, you don't need to know people in order to follow them or have them follow you. The key to leveraging Twitter lies in the simple fact that roughly 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. It's really that simple, but it's also very powerful. Think about that for a minute. If you follow 100 people, roughly 40 of those people will follow you back and become a captive and receptive audience for you and your tweets. Well, you might ask, what's the big deal? So I've got 40 people listening to me blabber on about what I do during the day. Well if you have a product or service you are trying to sell, this can be a very powerful marketing tool for two reasons. First of all, it's very easy to grow your Twitter following rapidly so that those 40 followers turn into 400 and then 4000 within a matter of weeks if you know what you're doing. Secondly, you can target these Twitter followers, so that those 400 or 4000 followers of yours are likely to be interested in whatever you're selling. Say for example you just opened an Italian Restaurant in Chicago and you'd like to attract some new customers. By using the Twitter search function, you can search the text of conversations for keywords like "pasta" or "italian food" etc. AND you can narrow down your search results so that you only see Twitterers who've discussed pasta and Italian food within say a 25 mile radius of Chicago. Now we're talking! So now all you need to do is follow those people and lo and behold, roughly 40% of them will follow you back! Now throughout the course of the day you can occasionally slip in a tweet about your new delicious pasta specials for the evening, or maybe link to a review of your new restaurant, you get the idea. This is an incredibly powerful marketing technique, because you can really laser target your prospects and build up a huge number of followers in a very short time. The key to making this work smoothly and to build up your followers quickly is to use automation. Luckily there are a number of tools available to help you quickly target and follow Twitterers within your niche. The two I recommend are Bird Feeder and Hummingbird. The way Hummingbird works, is that you identify other Twitterers with large followings and then follow their followers. So for example, if you're selling baby products, you might try and search for a Twitterer who also sells baby products or who offers advice and guidance to new moms. There's your captive audience right there. So then you launch Hummingbird and use it to follow all the Twitterers who are already following the person offering the advice to new moms. Hummingbird will auto-follow all these people with the click of a button and in just a matter of minutes, you can follow hundreds of Twitterers, with many following you back. Bird Feeder is a bit more sophisticated, in that it allows you to not only follow other Twitterers followers, but also leverages the Twitter search functionality, so that you can (like in our Italian restaurant example) target just people within a certain geographic area who used a certain keyword phrase. Then, like Hummingbird, you can click a button and Bird Feeder will auto-follow just the Twitterers who meet the search criteria you specified. This is the heart of Twitter marketing. FInd people you want to target, based on your niche or product or service, follow them and then rinse and repeat. You can very quickly build up a massive following of laser targeted Twitterers who are a receptive audience to whatever it is you're trying to market or sell.
Twitter is unique amongst the social networking services in that it allows you to very quickly build up a "following" of like minded people, or people that may be interested in a product or service you're selling. Unlike Facebook, for instance, you don't need to know people in order to follow them or have them follow you. The key to leveraging Twitter lies in the simple fact that roughly 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. It's really that simple, but it's also very powerful.
Think about that for a minute. If you follow 100 people, roughly 40 of those people will follow you back and become a captive and receptive audience for you and your tweets. Well, you might ask, what's the big deal? So I've got 40 people listening to me blabber on about what I do during the day. Well if you have a product or service you are trying to sell, this can be a very powerful marketing tool for two reasons. First of all, it's very easy to grow your Twitter following rapidly so that those 40 followers turn into 400 and then 4000 within a matter of weeks if you know what you're doing. Secondly, you can target these Twitter followers, so that those 400 or 4000 followers of yours are likely to be interested in whatever you're selling.
Say for example you just opened an Italian Restaurant in Chicago and you'd like to attract some new customers. By using the Twitter search function, you can search the text of conversations for keywords like "pasta" or "italian food" etc. AND you can narrow down your search results so that you only see Twitterers who've discussed pasta and Italian food within say a 25 mile radius of Chicago. Now we're talking! So now all you need to do is follow those people and lo and behold, roughly 40% of them will follow you back! Now throughout the course of the day you can occasionally slip in a tweet about your new delicious pasta specials for the evening, or maybe link to a review of your new restaurant, you get the idea. This is an incredibly powerful marketing technique, because you can really laser target your prospects and build up a huge number of followers in a very short time.
The key to making this work smoothly and to build up your followers quickly is to use automation. Luckily there are a number of tools available to help you quickly target and follow Twitterers within your niche. The two I recommend are Bird Feeder and Hummingbird.
The way Hummingbird works, is that you identify other Twitterers with large followings and then follow their followers. So for example, if you're selling baby products, you might try and search for a Twitterer who also sells baby products or who offers advice and guidance to new moms. There's your captive audience right there. So then you launch Hummingbird and use it to follow all the Twitterers who are already following the person offering the advice to new moms. Hummingbird will auto-follow all these people with the click of a button and in just a matter of minutes, you can follow hundreds of Twitterers, with many following you back. Bird Feeder is a bit more sophisticated, in that it allows you to not only follow other Twitterers followers, but also leverages the Twitter search functionality, so that you can (like in our Italian restaurant example) target just people within a certain geographic area who used a certain keyword phrase. Then, like Hummingbird, you can click a button and Bird Feeder will auto-follow just the Twitterers who meet the search criteria you specified.
This is the heart of Twitter marketing. FInd people you want to target, based on your niche or product or service, follow them and then rinse and repeat. You can very quickly build up a massive following of laser targeted Twitterers who are a receptive audience to whatever it is you're trying to market or sell. selling. Unlike Facebook, for instance, you don't need to know people in order to follow them or have them follow you. The key to leveraging Twitter lies in the simple fact that roughly 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. It's really that simple, but it's also very powerful. Think about that for a minute. If you follow 100 people, roughly 40 of those people will follow you back and become a captive and receptive audience for you and your tweets. Well, you might ask, what's the big deal? So I've got 40 people listening to me blabber on about what I do during the day. Well if you have a product or service you are trying to sell, this can be a very powerful marketing tool for two reasons. First of all, it's very easy to grow your Twitter following rapidly so that those 40 followers turn into 400 and then 4000 within a matter of weeks if you know what you're doing. Secondly, you can target these Twitter followers, so that those 400 or 4000 followers of yours are likely to be interested in whatever you're selling. Say for example you just opened an Italian Restaurant in Chicago and you'd like to attract some new customers. By using the Twitter search function, you can search the text of conversations for keywords like "pasta" or "italian food" etc. AND you can narrow down your search results so that you only see Twitterers who've discussed pasta and Italian food within say a 25 mile radius of Chicago. Now we're talking! So now all you need to do is follow those people and lo and behold, roughly 40% of them will follow you back! Now throughout the course of the day you can occasionally slip in a tweet about your new delicious pasta specials for the evening, or maybe link to a review of your new restaurant, you get the idea. This is an incredibly powerful marketing technique, because you can really laser target your prospects and build up a huge number of followers in a very short time. The key to making this work smoothly and to build up your followers quickly is to use automation. Luckily there are a number of tools available to help you quickly target and follow Twitterers within your niche. The two I recommend are Bird Feeder and Hummingbird. The way Hummingbird works, is that you identify other Twitterers with large followings and then follow their followers. So for example, if you're selling baby products, you might try and search for a Twitterer who also sells baby products or who offers advice and guidance to new moms. There's your captive audience right there. So then you launch Hummingbird and use it to follow all the Twitterers who are already following the person offering the advice to new moms. Hummingbird will auto-follow all these people with the click of a button and in just a matter of minutes, you can follow hundreds of Twitterers, with many following you back. Bird Feeder is a bit more sophisticated, in that it allows you to not only follow other Twitterers followers, but also leverages the Twitter search functionality, so that you can (like in our Italian restaurant example) target just people within a certain geographic area who used a certain keyword phrase. Then, like Hummingbird, you can click a button and Bird Feeder will auto-follow just the Twitterers who meet the search criteria you specified. This is the heart of Twitter marketing. FInd people you want to target, based on your niche or product or service, follow them and then rinse and repeat. You can very quickly build up a massive following of laser targeted Twitterers who are a receptive audience to whatever it is you're trying to market or sell.
About the Author:
If you find yourself wondering, just what is Twitter? Then go ahead and check out Whatistwitter.net - an excellent free resource on Twitter and essential Twitter Applications.
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