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Twitter was originally developed in 2006 but really exploded onto the scene in 2008 and in fact the number of Twitter users grew 1382% between January and February 2009. Twitter is basically a status update or micro blogging site that gives the user 140 characters to answer the question “What are you doing?” and their response is called a tweet. Your Tweets can then be seen by everyone. And I mean everyone as all tweets are public information unless you change your settings to only allow your followers to see them. So as I said everyone can see them but only your followers will be alerted when you tweet. So how can this help a business?

The users of Twitter are predominantly professionals and businesses now so it is a great source of information on all topics. You can show yourself and your business to be the experts by giving away information and helping others on the site to get the answers they seek. If you are interesting and produce great content people will follow you and as you only have 140 characters they will go to your website for more information.

Getting started on twitter takes seconds but before you jump on and tweet away you should do a little work. Setting a background for your Twitter page is important and you should make the best possible use of the space available to you. For example there is a space on the left hand side of the screen which I have used to promote my other social networking sites as well as my services. Check it out at www.twitter.com/totalwsi and you will see what I mean.

Next thing to do is to search twitter for possible followers and there are a number of ways to do this. Spammers often follow as many people as possible in the hope that they will follow them back out of courtesy. This is one way to build up your followers but I would not recommend it as you will find that your timeline is filled with information you do not care about like “mmmm I love toast”. Also by using this method your followers will not be your target audience and this will show up in your poor results.

Instead use the search function on the right hand side or go to http://search.twitter.com and type in anything related to your industry even your brand name and see who is talking about your industry. These are the people you need to have conversations with as these people and their followers are interested in your market. Before you begin to follow and interact with these people study their timelines and try to understand what gets them to interact with their followers or people they follow as this will be how you get in front of all the people following them. There is a great book called Twitter Power by Joel Comm which goes into great detail on how to get followers and the sort of tweets you need to be putting out there. This is a must read for any business or person looking to be successful on Twitter.

At this point you want to begin to tweet so your time line is filling up with great information. REMEMBER do not just push your products, services or blogs all the time followers want to see you as a human being not a corporate machine. Begin following the leaders in your industry and when you can have a conversation with them on your topic. This way if they reply to you all the people following them will see you as an expert and begin to follow you too.

Of course the main aim of any business is to have people directed to their website for more information as there is only so much you can say in 140 characters so make sure your website is designed with conversion in mind to get the best return on investment. This is a topic I will be discussing next week.

Provide great content and you will build your audience, answer questions and you will be seen as the expert, ask leading questions and you will expose your timeline to more people but most of all get tweeting and have fun.

If your company is not already using Social Media networking to get ahead you should be. There are vast numbers of sites out there to use and each is slightly unique. I would not suggest you try to register with them all or even just the 10 listed here unless you outsource this to a suitable agency. If you try to cover them all yourself you will fail, so go for two or three to begin with. With the current success and growth of Twitter I would suggest this is one to try and I will go into more detail on Twitter next week.

Social media sites offer very different opportunities for businesses but you need to get out of the old marketing habit of thinking campaigns all the time and start thinking conversations. Users of social networking sites what to hear about things that will interest them and the occasional push to your site is ok but do it too much and they will either ignore your updates or stop following you altogether.

1) Twitter (The micro blogging service that asks “what are you doing?” is huge at the moment used by a large number of professionals and companies.)

2) Facebook (Social networking site no longer for kids. The fastest growing demographic is 35+. Businesses are quickly getting onboard and I think skittles have a particularly good page.)

3) Linkedin (Professional networking site made up of business people, graduates and corporations all looking to make connections in the corporate world for recruitment and collaboration.)

4) YouTube (The worlds 2nd largest search engine with over 1 Billion videos viewed daily. Make a video, optimise it and get it out there and you will increase your brand awareness as well as traffic to your site.)

5) Wikipedia (Create your own business page and make sure your business is one of the 13 Million articles available to the public. There is also a strong community of professionals interested in news, research and business in the Wiki community.)

6) Squidoo (Show yourself as the expert in your field by answering questions and revealing some industry secrets as well as creating your own profile page.)

7) Yahoo Answers (This question and answer site also allows you to show yourself as the expert in your field and linking the answer back to information on your site will bring a number of interested visitors.)

8) Reddit (Submit your company articles or blog posts here on a regular basis and you will increase your presence on the site and in turn increase the traffic to your own site)

9) Naymz (A unique networking platform for professionals to manage their brand, expand their network, collaborate on projects and more.)

10) Digg (Users of Digg search the internet for content they like and Digg it. I have left this until last as it is a little different to the others but still very powerful. You can not make your business show up on Digg it either happens or it doesn’t UNLESS you have a large database of Digg users who will like your content and you push it their way. The more Diggs your content gets the more Digg users will see it and Digg it also).

There are a huge number of Social Media and Social bookmarking sites on the internet now some very popular and some not so popular. You will need to begin with just a few and the top 3 or 4 will be a good place to start however there are also a number of niche sites that may benefit your business. Before you start you will want to do some in depth research into the type of networks that will best suit your business and check out if your brand it already being discussed on any of them.

What is Social Media?

Officially social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

 

Why is it important to a business?

Two thirds of the global internet population visit social networks on a regular basis. In fact visiting these social networks is now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal emails. Time spent on social networks is growing rapidly at 3X the overall internet rate.

Most companies try to use social media as just another marketing channel but it offers so much more. Social media is an essential tool for developing public relations, customer service, loyalty building, market research and customer acquisition to name a few.

 

Why act now?

92% of all digital consumers only buy a product if their peers, social influencers or blogs have written a positive review about it.

93% of social media users believe that a company should have a presence in social media and 85% believe a company should go further and interact with its customers.

Your competitors are already there, your customers have been there for a long time. What are you waiting for?

The Power of Social Media

YouTube has on average 1 billion videos viewed per day.

Twitter sees on average 3 million tweets per day and experienced 1382% monthly growth between January and February 2009.

Facebook has over 250 million active users.

If your message is interesting your followers/fans/friends will pass it along to theirs and the message will go viral and reach an audience of millions in a matter of hours. What other medium can deliver results like this?

Stop thinking campaigns and start thinking conversations!