Back in January I blogged about my early experiences of using Twitter and whether I thought it was worth using Twitter for business.
The post received a lot of comments and clearly a lot of people had an opinion they wanted to share!
Now some months on I am still using Twitter and I have developed a technique that is working very well for the KKSmarts business.
Hear or be Heard?
In my view Twitter has two facilities of use to a business. One is to be heard (ie: to get your message our quickly to a large audience) and the second is to listen to your market place.
Most people using Twitter seem to be stuck in the “I want to be heard” mode. They constantly spend their time on Twitter just trying to push their message and miss out on one of the really valuable aspects of Twitter.
Twitter is a goldmine of searchable, up to the minute information in easy, bite sized chunks.
To successfully use Twitter for you business you need to appreciate that are these two distinct skills you need to learn. One is how to listen effectively on Twitter and find the right bits of information and the second is how to find the right audience who will listen to your message (ie: your Tweets).
Listening to the Twitter Heartbeat
As I already mentioned Twitter is a real treasure trove of useful information. Lots of people are posting incredibly useful links that you would probably struggle to find using Google or any other means.
Whilst I have a list of blogs that I frequently check (using this clever RSS feed reader), I still manage to find new and very interesting blog posts from Twitter. In addition, I also find some very useful articles, website, tools etc. All through listening to Tweets.
I have developed a technique to make my listening very targeted and I can now cut through a lot of the noise on Twitter quite easily (and we all know that there is a LOT of noise on Twitter).
The video below explains how I do this.
I’ll write another blog post soon about how I use Twitter to get my message out but for now I hope you found this listening tip useful.
So, how do you listen to Twitter? Any tips?
Really well said! As a search marketer, I’m trying to figure out a way to use Twitter in tandem with my search marketing efforts. The new search feature on Twitter helps me get the scoop on what people are saying about my clients and opens up a door to find new possible keywords. It’s much more dynamic than Google Trends and/or Yahoo Buzz. If Twitter can shape itself into a search engine, it has potential for a really bright future.
Very useful. Have discovered tweetdeck & search terms…but hadn’t got as afar as using the filters. I can now remove the twitter spammers from my stream… thanks
K
I learned something very useful today!
Going to start setting that up right away.
Thanks,
Trea
Tweets of AdWords users helps me gain an insight into the problems they are having and importantly the language they are using to express those problems.
Best regards,
Marjun
Marjun,
That’s a great point about seeing the language that people are using. Good thinking!
Cheers
Mike
Thank You for the excellent lesson… Don
My pleasure Don. Glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks so much Mike, really helpful! Thanks again for the good work on adwords; it’s made a big difference.
Madelyn
Parisperfect.com
Thank you Mike for my first lesson. I can see that I will have to relisten to the lesson again. Especially how not to use Twitter at the beginning of your blog. So much to learn, but thanks for this step.
[...] harder for its customers and covers all aspects of Website Promotion. You can read more here about Using Twitter as a Serious Business Tool and watch a video with search technique [...]
Really useful relevant, short, bite-sized piece of information to take in, especially late at night. Like the use of the video….def the way to go. Thank You Mike
PS. Dove Counselling – I’m with you there on the so much to learn…..
Have to agree with what you said about everybody trying to push their message, I’ve only just signed up fairly recently but have noticed this. Twitter can be great when used effectively, engaging with people rather than just throwing your message out at them. Thanks for the tips. Karl
[...] Seddon is one of the regular writers of the Website Promotion Blog. You will find his guide to Using Twitter as a Serious Business Tool on the blog along with his video on some clever Twitter search techniques using [...]
I have just signed up to Twitter for our business today and so far we are following about 70 people. I think regular, interesting and on topic tweets will be a great way to boost traffic to our website, so yes I agree, its a great business tool!
[...] harder for its customers and covers all aspects of Website Promotion. You can read more here about Using Twitter as a Serious Business Tool and watch a video with search technique [...]