Twitter is one of those phenomenal opportunities to build your online presence for free, but I see a ton of people making major mistakes on Twitter.
Here are 3 mistakes and what to do instead.
Mistake 1: Being overly salesy.
It's true that there's a time and place to promote yourself and what you offer on Twitter, as on all social media platforms.
The mistake is in overdoing it.
If you look at some people's Twitter streams, it's all about them, their links, their products.
I'll tell you the truth, no one wants to follow you on Twitter or anywhere else if you're one big billboard.
What to do instead: Twitter is called social media for a reason.
It's social! Be a real person, post what you find of value for other people, good links, new ideas, good resources.
Of course you can post some promotional tweets too, just keep it around 20-25%.
If you wonder if you're overdoing it, click on your own profile and take a look at your own Twitter stream.
Make sure lots of sociable tweets are dominant, with promotional stuff tucked in here and there.
Mistake 2: "If you build it, they will come" -- or waiting for people to follow you.
People will follow you as they see you posting good valuable tweets, but if you sit around waiting for a bigger following, you could be waiting longer than you need to.
What to do instead: Use the search function of Twitter to look for people by keyword, either geographically if that's important in your business, or by important keywords.
This search function is also available in several of the applications that continue to pop up to make Twitter more useable for people, like Tweetdeck.
Mistake 3: Becoming a Twit-addict and spending too much time.
If you haven't found this out yet, you will soon -- it can be addicting to sit and follow the conversations going on all hours of the day and night on Twitter! You can look up and find an hour has passed if you're not careful -- and what have you really accomplished? What to do instead: First, use tools like Tweetlater that allow you to schedule your own tweets to appear at different times during the day.
This is important because people are on at all different times and you want them to see you participating with value.
You'll catch more people in different time zones by posting at different times of the day.
Also you can set a time in your daily or weekly calendar to pre-schedule some tweets, which is one more way that 'batch processing' can be a great time management tool for you.
You'll also want to participate spontaneously and just pop on and enter some conversations that are going on.
Schedule 10 minutes one or two times a day to do that, depending on your availability.
That way you can take advantage of hot topics and be seen as someone who adds value, but you also manage your time and don't get into a 'Twitter trance' and lose track of time! It's a tool, make it work for you!
Here are 3 mistakes and what to do instead.
Mistake 1: Being overly salesy.
It's true that there's a time and place to promote yourself and what you offer on Twitter, as on all social media platforms.
The mistake is in overdoing it.
If you look at some people's Twitter streams, it's all about them, their links, their products.
I'll tell you the truth, no one wants to follow you on Twitter or anywhere else if you're one big billboard.
What to do instead: Twitter is called social media for a reason.
It's social! Be a real person, post what you find of value for other people, good links, new ideas, good resources.
Of course you can post some promotional tweets too, just keep it around 20-25%.
If you wonder if you're overdoing it, click on your own profile and take a look at your own Twitter stream.
Make sure lots of sociable tweets are dominant, with promotional stuff tucked in here and there.
Mistake 2: "If you build it, they will come" -- or waiting for people to follow you.
People will follow you as they see you posting good valuable tweets, but if you sit around waiting for a bigger following, you could be waiting longer than you need to.
What to do instead: Use the search function of Twitter to look for people by keyword, either geographically if that's important in your business, or by important keywords.
This search function is also available in several of the applications that continue to pop up to make Twitter more useable for people, like Tweetdeck.
Mistake 3: Becoming a Twit-addict and spending too much time.
If you haven't found this out yet, you will soon -- it can be addicting to sit and follow the conversations going on all hours of the day and night on Twitter! You can look up and find an hour has passed if you're not careful -- and what have you really accomplished? What to do instead: First, use tools like Tweetlater that allow you to schedule your own tweets to appear at different times during the day.
This is important because people are on at all different times and you want them to see you participating with value.
You'll catch more people in different time zones by posting at different times of the day.
Also you can set a time in your daily or weekly calendar to pre-schedule some tweets, which is one more way that 'batch processing' can be a great time management tool for you.
You'll also want to participate spontaneously and just pop on and enter some conversations that are going on.
Schedule 10 minutes one or two times a day to do that, depending on your availability.
That way you can take advantage of hot topics and be seen as someone who adds value, but you also manage your time and don't get into a 'Twitter trance' and lose track of time! It's a tool, make it work for you!
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