I was introduced to social media about 5 years ago. Ironically, I was not introduced to social media through working in marketing and online marketing, but through a friend working. I was introduced first to Facebook and quickly discovered the personal and professional benefits of staying in touch and communicating with friends and professional contacts. I started working with LinkedIn shortly after and when the user-base of Twitter started exploding, I had to get involved and discover the benefits of that platform too.
Ironically, that same friend that had got me hooked on Facebook contacted me 2 weeks ago asking me what I knew about Twitter. I was surprised. I had assumed he understood the benefits of social media for sales and had evolved with the technology and solutions just as I had. So this article is for my friend. The following steps are a guide to starting your adventure on Twitter with a goal to increase sales. Take your time with these steps. This is a process not a race.
The first thing to understand about Twitter and especially using Twitter for sales is that it is not acceptable practice to sell on Twitter. Selling is frowned upon on Twitter. Your audience on Twitter is not there to be sold to, they are there to be informed by you and learn more about who you are. When using Twitter for sales, success is determined by how authentic and real you are and how the information you share benefits your audience.
Step 1: Select a Twitter Handle or name. There are plenty of articles out there that support the idea that a sales professional is essentially operating his or her own business within a business. The name of that business is - insert your name – a.k.a. your personal brand - here. So pick a Twitter name or handle that closely represents your personal brand; your name or as close to your name as possible.
Step 2: Customize your profile. One of the worst things you can do is leave the default Twitter Egg as your profile image and leave the personal description field empty. Upload an image that closely represents your personal brand and gives some insight to who you are as a person. You can change your profile image at any time. Describe the real you in 160 characters or less. Again, let your audience know who you really are, be clever, be authentic. Your personal description will evolve over time. Include a link to your website, your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook page, or anywhere you want to direct your followers to that will help convert them to eventually become customers. There is a feature where you can upload a background image for your Twitter page, but this is not important to focus on in the early goings. Content is king from here on in.
Step 3: Do some searches on Twitter for information providers and influencers in your field. You are looking for information that you can redistribute to your customers and potential customers on Twitter that will provide value to them and / or their business. Ask yourself what your customer is looking for on Twitter. It could be industry news, information from suppliers, peers and influencers in their industry and market. Follow suppliers of information that provides value to your customers and retweet that valuable information.
Step 4: Twitter is about sharing information and engaging. We will talk about engaging later. You need information to share with your audience, your customers and potential customers that provide value. Information can be provided in a number of ways. You or someone on your team may write articles that inform your audience. Add those articles to your company or personal website or blog and post a link to the article on Twitter. Google Alerts and Google Reader are excellent tools for providing access to articles and information to share on Twitter. Any articles worth posting should be posted with a shortened link using URL shorteners like bit.ly which also tracks how many clicks your link receives.
Step 5: By now you should have retweeted some interesting posts and posted some good information yourself. You should have attracted some followers and perhaps even received some ‘@’ mentions or direct messages (dm’s) from the Twitter-folk you retweeted or followers wishing to engage with you. This is the part in this exercise where Twitter-folk get to know the person behind the tweets. Respond to legitimate ‘@’ mentions (you will quickly learn which mentions or dm’s are legitimate or spam). Share some information about yourself, a picture of you doing something fun on the weekend, or tweet about a funny situation in the office, respond to tweets from twitter-folk or share a personal view. Let your audience get to know the real you in between your tweets about your business. This is the part we call engaging, and it’s very important. You want to slowly build relationships with the your potential customers and stronger relationships with those who are already customers.
Step 6: Now you’re cooking with gas, you’ve got a system down, you’re more comfortable with Twitter, you’re sharing valuable information and engaging in conversation, you’re not afraid to be yourself, you’re not afraid to make mistakes and admit that you make mistakes, but most importantly you’re having fun. Your Twitter Page is well populated with valuable information and snippets of conversations with fellow tweeters. Now you invite your customers and contacts to follow you on Twitter. Twitter offers features that allow you to send email invitations to these contacts and customers to check out your page and follow you. Perhaps your company has a newsletter and they would be happy make a brief announcement through their marketing channels to have customers connect with you on Twitter. In some cases you may have to go individually through your contacts and customers and search their names and company names to see if they have a Twitter page that you can follow. Generally when you follow someone on Twitter, they will glance through your Twitter page and see if you are worth following back. Provide information that is valuable to them and they will follow you.
Step 7: Now that you are following customers and potential customers, engage those customers. Support their business by retweeting an important announcement that they would like to share. Respond to a question or an opinion that they share on Twitter. Remember to be yourself. Be authentic.
Step 8: There will always be new individuals and organizations that you will want to do business with. Whenever you come across these sales leads find out if they have a Twitter account and follow them. This is a never-ending process for you. You may have a customer that didn’t have a Twitter account 6 months ago, but has started one now. Keep looking for your customers and potential customers on Twitter and follow them. Engage with them when you can. For sales people looking to attract a less targeted, more general and much larger audience, tools like Tweet Adder can be used to help automate your follower acquisition process.
Step 9: Now you’re not just tweeting anymore. You are building relationships and these relationships can start to be taken offline. Invite a follower out for a coffee or a free consult at the office. Create a tweetup at an industry function. Join some influencers for lunch. Ask followers that you have built relationships with if you can add them as connections in other social media platforms like LinkedIn and add them to your company’s enewsletter lists.
Step 10: You’ve been on Twitter for quite some time now, you’ve built up a nice little following, you are positioning yourself as a knowledge leader and influencer in your marketplace. You have had a couple of conversations that have led to some business opportunities; maybe you closed a couple. KEEP GOING. Follow steps 2 through 9 massaging / optimizing your profile (now take care of that background image), finding new resources for valuable information to share, keep writing your own articles or share articles written by your team members. Continue to provide value, engage and grow your audience!
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