A World Class Networking Platform: Twitter!

Twitter is an absolutely fantastic online business tool, and it has, on quite a few occasions, staggered somewhat under the weight of its incredible growth – and sometimes, when a world wide news break occurs, “tweeters” from across the globe leap forward and crash their servers. It’s difficult to think of anything that has had such an amazing growth curve as this upstart social networking platform. Twitter didn’t exist at the beginning of 2006, yet today it’s ranked as the 25th most important website in the world by a number of visitors, and it has many millions of active followers.

Twitter does shatter the usual trends in a variety of ways, insofar as anything relating to social networking has an established “trend” of course. Twitter lets you post messages, either via a web portal or through your mobile phone, letting everyone know exactly what you’re thinking, where you’re at or what you’re doing at the moment. Your message is limited to 140 characters or less, so it’s always short and to the point. You have the option of selecting who you want to talk to, and who you want to hear from – known as “followers” or “following” in the world of Twitter.

At this early stage of its development, Twitter doesn’t really have an online business model as such. You can quickly sign up and start “tweeting” your message at no cost whatsoever. Marketers take a long hard look at the viral possibilities provided by this service and they begin to salivate. All sorts of amazing opportunities await those who work toward harnessing Twitter’s incredible power.

Twitter is perfect for communicating business news or interacting with your friends and family. You can send a message directly from your mobile phone using one of the currently available applications, without even having to visit a computer. It’s hard to set a figure to the actual number of the current users because of the in-flux nature of the platform, but a large number of experts do believe that the number of very active users, or those who regularly follow and get followed, represents a very small percentage of the total number of users.

Even though the actual number of really active users might be only a few percent of the total users, the Twitter platform can still be seen as having really great marketing potential. Internet marketers should choose to solicit their followers with caution. Whatever your niche, the first thing that you need to do is to seek out other experts who are regular “tweeters”. You can do this by using a simple search within the program. Once you locate these experts, take some time and apply yourself to figuring out what kind of followers they’re going after, because your job is to work toward adding friends or followers to your Twitter feed in a strategic and consistent manner.

As it appears that the vast majority of members do not actively keep up with Twitter, it follows that there is no point in adding followers without trying to qualify them. If you can readily see that the follower in question has a fairly active list of individuals who he or she is following and, in turn, is being followed by, then they’re definitely good potential targets for you to go after.

Try and build a list of followers by initially following those who you suspect may have an interest in your product or service. If you have qualified them and you find that they follow you back, you are on your way.

While you may include your information in the profile provided by Twitter, experts recommend that you also design some kind of banner or template instead of using a regular wallpaper background. This should include your branding, logo and message and it’s something that all serious marketers maintain.

Just as with any other kind of Internet marketing or website development, stay clear of spamming and keep your messages relevant, informative and entertaining as well. There’s always a time and a place for your marketing message, and when you do use it, you should always do it a subtle fashion. Happy Tweeting!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Executive Virtual Assistant who assists businesses and individuals with achieving their professional goals. Want to find out more about online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!