BUILDING YOUR TRIBE WITH TWITTER

Twitter is a micro blogging and social networking site. It allows you to answer a question like “What are you doing?” by sending short messages of only 140 characters to keep your followers updated.

For businesses, Twitter is a useful tool that can be used to build a tribe of loyal followers. Once you connect with your tribe, you can use Twitter for market research, to build brand awareness and position yourself as an expert.

As there are about 200 million accounts on Twitter, your main goal is to find the people who want to hear your message. What is your niche? Who do you want to connect with? Who will best fit the products or service that you provide? These are important questions to ask yourself. To say you are in the fitness niche is way too broad. You need to zero in on the exact target audience you are speaking to and where you will find them. My user name is busymumsfitness so this indicates to users that I am speaking to the niche of busy mums who want to know more about fitness.

BENEFITS OF TWITTER FOR BUSINESS:

• It is free to join. There are no monthly fees. All you need is a computer and an internet connection or even just your mobile phone.
• As you only have 140 characters to get your message across, Twitter forces you to be concise. It is a great way to share your expertise and build credibility – you can join in a conversation on different topics or in groups and provide expert knowledge. Once you build a relationship with them, you can then direct them to your website.
• You can build your tribe fast. Charlie Sheen just set the world record for amassing 1 million followers in 25 hours and 17 minutes. Whilst we may not have the celebrity of Charlie Sheen, we can position ourselves so that we can be seen as the expert in our niche. I have been able to accumulate over 8000 followers on Twitter for my user ‘busymumsfitness’.
• It’s a fast way to get news out – when major events happen around the world, people are finding out first through Twitter instead of through traditional media outlets. For business, you can use this to your advantage by immediately notifying your followers about launches, sales or special offers.
• Users can search Twitter to find out what conversations that are happening in their geographical area. Just yesterday, I put out a tweet that I was launching a new boot camp at Varsity Lakes. Not long aft er, I was contacted by a journalist writing for the local community website who had searched for “Varsity Lakes” on Twitter. She is now writing a story about the launch of my new boot camp.

NEGATIVES

• Only having 140 characters to work with can make it tricky to get all your information out – it does require some thought and planning.
• It can become a time waster. It is important that you plan out your tweets just as you would with any other type of marketing activity. Don’t fall into the trap of constantly checking your twitter account. Plan to spend a certain amount of time to tweet and go through your messages.
• You need to be careful that you don’t come across as too spammy – make sure the information you provide is useful and helps people. If you are constantly selling, people will switch off .

Twitter can be a great tool to build and connect with your tribe as long as it’s used correctly. For Twitter to work for you, just remember to define your niche, provide useful information and don’t let it be a time waster to distract you from growing your business.