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There are still many people who just do not see the point in Twitter or social media for that matter when it comes to business.

• How can Twitter help me sell more?
• Why should I use Twitter?
• How will Twitter affect my bottom line?

These are just some of the questions I get asked every day as well as hearing things like I tried Twitter for a few weeks and it didn’t get me any business and twitter will not work for my business.

There are two reasons in my opinion that most people fail to understand and make twitter work for them. The first is that they do not or can not give enough time up to firstly learn about it and secondly to use it on a regular basis. As with all social media Twitter can be very time consuming and in some cases life consuming. Believe me I know we have social media teams who work non stop on clients’ campaigns, but social media is their life and they love the fact that their job requires them to constantly be connected to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and all the other social networks out there. So you need a good amount of time to run a social media campaign well. You need to understand the quirks of each social network, listen to the users of the networks all day everyday in order to react fast to opportunities and you must, must, must be adding content to each of the networks on a regular basis.

The second reason most people fail on social networks is that they are too stuck in the old ways of marketing. Stop thinking campaigns and start thinking conversations. If you speak to a traditional marketer they will say just put your company news on such as opening a new store, discount on this range of products and so on. This is wrong and you will fail if this is all you do on social networks. People have changed and many now ignore marketing messages. People buy from people no matter if you are in the B2B or B2C sector your prospects are still people and they will buy from you if they trust you enough. To be successful in any social media campaign you must be a real person talking about things your target audience can relate to. Your tweets need to be a mix of personal feelings, interesting industry related information and your marketing messages. Take the example of an IT consultancy working in the B2B sector their target audience will be IT departments and possibly MD’s of SME’s. The MD will be interested in the latest technology that will help streamline his operations and cut his costs. The IT department staff will also be interested in the latest technology, advances and breakthroughs in the industry. This therefore should be around 60% of your tweets with around 15% personal and 25% marketing messages to keep your company top of mind.  When I say personal though I do not mean reveal everything about your personal life but in this example perhaps the IT consultant may say “Just received my Ipad this thing is amazing” or ask questions of your audience like “Has anyone tried the new Ipad yet?”. By doing this you will build a relationship with your audience and they will become loyal followers and guess who they will call if they need an IT Consultant in the future.