Thursday, May 28, 2009

How To Use Twitter For Your Home Business

Setup your account and immediately start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space.Add a picture.People want to see you.Put a link to your home business site in your profile page.Give some idea of the nature of your home business.

Talk to people about their interests too and not just your interests.It shows you’re human.Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.Share links to neat things in your community.Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. Be wary of always trying to sell your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.Promote your own outside-of-work stories and experiences. Throw in a few celebrities.Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention”?Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.Ask questions.Twitter is great for getting opinions.Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes others feel like you’re not “that guy.”When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point to pictures and other human things.

Don’t toot your own horn too much. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Start twitting today and gain exposure for your home business.

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