Twitter – why having a huge following is great for business and how to attract more followers

I’m the first to admit I was a bit slow on the uptake for Twitter.  My husband had been nagging me for months to get on to Twitter and use it as a way to grow my businesses.  To be honest, I had my doubts.  How could a 160 character update attract anyone to follow me, let alone have any positive impact on my business?  And what on earth was I going to tweet about?

Then I stumbled across a ‘how-to’ program which helped me see the light.  I paid around $US25 for the program and was amazed by what I learnt.   I’m so impressed that I’m sharing this new-found knowledge with Home Biz Chicks subscribers.

Why Twitter? Twitter is the fastest growing social networking medium in the world.  There are millions of users online every day conversing about things they’re interested in – whether that is personal stuff, hobbies, or business.   The beauty of Twitter is that is groups together people who are interested in the same thing, so you can easily find consumers who might be interested in your products.

The stats are interesting – I know of a user who has 16,000 followers.  On average, around 400 people click on the links in his tweets each and every time.  If that link goes to a web site with a product to sell, he’s got 400 new prospects every time he tweets.

How to make the most of Twitter: The key here is to automate your Twitter account as much as possible.  You also need to tweet about something that is interesting (but the good news is you can automate that too!). Here are the steps I’ve followed:

1. Upload an engaging photo of yourself looking directly into the camera.

2.    Upload an interesting bio – something funny, personal, cheeky, engaging – anything that can capture attention.  Mine says “Home Biz Chicks evangelist, white chocoholic, PR Queen, Greece nut, mother to 1 and a half, step mother to 2, doting wife, BandB fan, fearlessly determined” .  I am amazed by how many people have commented on my bio since I changed it from the standard professional profile.

3.    Personalise your page by going to mytweetspace.com. You can add images, a banner, text, anything that shows you’ve taken the time create something unique.

4.    Update the design of your home page by using the Settings Tab and Design.  

5.    Send an automatic response to everyone who follows you. This is especially powerful if you want to send a link to drive people to opt in to your list. The product recommends using an affiliate response which I haven’t done – mine is offering the report “How to Generate Free Publicity For Your Home Based Business”. Go to tweetlater.com and follow the links to auto welcome and auto follow.

6.    Find people to follow who are interested in the things you offer. Did you know it’s twitter etiquette to follow people who follow you?  The key to generating more followers is to follow more people yourself, who are then likely to follow you back.  Find people who are interested in what you have to offer by visiting twollo.com and then adding key words to your searches.  You can also find people using Twitter’s yellow pages directory which is twellow.com.

7.    Create content for your tweets. So, how do you keep people engaged?  The trick is to post useful information about your topic, regardless of whether it comes from your web site or someone else’s.  If you’re constantly tweeting about your subject, people will notice and begin to view you as an expert in the field, who knows where to find some great information.  Do this by creating google alerts using key words for your industry.  Set up a gmail account for the alerts to be delivered to, and then set them up as an RSS feed.  Set up an account with twitterfeed.com, add the HTML code from your alerts into your account and shorten the link using tinyurl (there are drop down boxes for each step). These alerts will then automatically feed into your twitter update every few hours, giving you timely and interesting content that you don’t need to spend hours researching.  If you have products to sell, tweet about those too.

Follow these guidelines and you too will see your followers skyrocket. 

If you want more detailed information, including the step by step ‘how to’ videos, plus a check-list, you can purchase the product (which I recommend and have used) “Twitter Traffic Machine – the Automated Growth and Money Making System” .

© 2009 Home Biz Chicks