Twitter for business..

[pleno1]

Started a new job last week after graduating at a wealth management company (financial advisers) in Newcastle. I'm in charge of marketing/pr. To cut a long story short, basically I am writing lots of articles and trying to get potential clients  (top 200 companies in UK, directors/higher earners ) to read the articles and become interested in what we have to offer. So for example I write an article on salary sacrifice, 200 people read it and 3 are interested, out of those 3 who are interested 1 of them joins us and we have his/her business for the next 20+ years.

I am competent on the internet as I'm 21 and most 21 year olds are. I however have no clue how to use Twitter at all, basically what I thought about doing was "tweeting" (cringe) every day just about whatever, then every so often direct a tweet to our website where I've spoke about a certain topic and then people get interested etc etc.

Most of the twitter pages I have read either have like 10k+ followers because they are famous, or like 50-100 which is just like people they know etc, I really want to get our page out there and get hundreds if not thousands of followers, but I have literally no idea where to start attracting them from as it's probably the only form of social networking that I've never used before, I was thinking of potential "publicity stunts" but none were really viable.

Anyway, any hints/tips/advice (even if you dont use twitter but think it would be a really good idea to do .... to attract someone then dont be shy ) for a twitter fish would be very welcome

[Linux]

Write your articles then link them on your twitter page. @ reply people like Peter Jones, Duncan Banatyne or other dragons/business men and ask them to ReTweet it to there followers

[Acidmouse]

I would look for other twitter accounts that are of a business nature, see how they do it...Its pointless looking at random peoples blog links and snippets of life coz thats not what you wanting.

Most companies I know that are pretty 'with it' have a blog with facebook, twitter, RSA feeds all linked together back to the company website. I guess you will already know this.

Twitter is kinda new really for many business and I am not sure if anyone has found the 'right' forumula for promoting their business via it.

[Girgy85]

Ive just recently got into Twitter on my phone. Add me @girgy85 and il spread the word for you!

[AndrewT]

PM Tikay - he's an expert on Twitter.

[DaveShoelace]

http://mashable.com/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/11/looking-for-m-1.html#axzz0tdrZOxMM

Search for the twitter articles on the above three, very useful websites indeed

[pleno1]

@linux..  will it not be hard to get them to send out links to my business? obv if we could get them would be unbelieveable.

@acidmouse.. yeah i realise that, we havnt had any of this before, but that's why i've been brought in, really wanna do a good job and hopefully will crack twitter

@girgy.. will add you tonight mate

@andrewt.. level? i dont read his blog on here so no idea.

@daveshoelace.. weeee tyvm, will give them a read over.

ty gents.

[Claw75]

PM Tikay - he's an expert on Twitter.

[Linux]

Yea, it will be hard to get the to retweet, but iv seen people like duncan banatyne do it before

[Newmanseye]

Twitter is ok, however I found Linkedin  gets more bites than the main stream networking sites.

[erse]

webmasterworld.com/social_media/4172147.htm

Here's a recipe you can use to get traffic and leads from twitter "on demand".
The beauty is that every day there are new people who are interested in what you have to sell, say, whatever.

1) Create a twitter account with a keyword rich name, e.g: widgetguy

2) Make your 'face' picture something that people actually want to look at

3) Edit your profile so it contains some compelling info

4) Add a custom background (including your phone # email, if appropriate)
Screen capture programs like Screen Grab Pro are a quick and easy way to make a custom background based off of your website.

5) Make a couple of tweets relevant to widgets, etc

6) Go to search.twitter.com and search for widgets
What are people talking about?

7) Identify tweets that scream - help me!
Examples: "Does anyone have widget recommendations?", "Gah, this 'widgetcompetitorproduct' stinks!", "Oh man, i'm so sick of 'problem that widget solves'"

8 ) Refine your search so that you are mostly pulling the kinds of tweets you want to reply to.

9) Reply to those tweets (click the little reply), let them know how you can help them, also follow them.
You don't have to be 'friends' with them for people to see this reply.
Examples: "Sounds like you're looking for a new widget, check this out [bit.ly...] etc.
You might want to experiment with just starting up a conversation, posting a link to a landing page, etc.

10) Convert them to a sale.
The best thing you can do is have some way to track conversions - so if you have a landing page make sure you're tracking where the click came from.

I'm sure this is old hat to a lot of the veterans here but it seems like a lot of people are looking for ways to grow Social Media traffic ... so here is just one of them! Also, remember that there are tools out there to help you automate some of the drudgery involved. Just make sure to learn exactly how they work first so you don't end up putting your virtual foot in your mouth.