Twitter: It's "What Are You Doing?" NOT "What Are You Selling?"

Everyone who knows me knows I’m a HUGE Twitter fan. In fact I frequently tell people that I have grown my business significantly over the past several months from Twitter alone. The problem is, when I tell people that their first response is usually, “That’s great! How can I promote MY business on Twitter?” Ahh see? That’s where they are misunderstanding. I never said I was promoting my business, I said I was growing it! Big difference!

Imagine this scenario: You’re invited to a cocktail party. You go thinking you’re going to have a great time and meet a lot of great people. Some might turn into business contacts or even customers down the road, while others might become personal friends. Either way, you’re hoping to have a good time and enjoy a little fun and relaxation. You get to the party and start mingling when you suddenly realize that every third or fourth person you talk to hands you a brochure, a business card and a sample from their product line. At first you politely accept the information and move on but after awhile you find yourself getting annoyed. You didn’t come here to shop! You came here to meet people and enjoy yourself.

Twitter is a party, plain and simple. It’s a huge room with lots of interesting people that you can choose to engage in conversation or not. Where that conversation leads is up to you but starting off by saying “hi you’ve got to see this product” or “check out my website” is not exactly relationship material.

Tweet with These Simple Rules in Mind
I follow a few simple guidelines while participating on Twitter. I have found great success with them and I hope you will too.

1. Use your picture in your profile, not your logo – If I choose to follow you, I want to find out about YOU as a person, not what your brand is about. While I’m getting to know you it helps to put a face with the name.
2. Fill out a complete profile! – So many people miss the value of doing this. Give me a little information about who you are and what you do and YES include a website link because if you look like someone I want to follow (based on your profile and what kinds of things you’re tweeting about) then I am probably going to check out your website to find out more about your business. This is KEY! I WILL check out your business if I am interested in you as a person first, I don’t need you to send me a link before I’m ready.
3. Follow and be followed – chances are I’m not going to follow you if you’re following 5,000 people but only have 30 people following you. This tells me that you’re only interested in following as many people as you can without letting your followers catch up.
4. Don’t just sit there, SAY SOMETHING! – I’m also not going to follow you if you’re following 5,000 people and only have one or two tweets. I need to see that you are engaging others in conversation in a meaningful way, not sending them link after link to your website or opt in page. If you're an expert at something then educate people by answering questions and offering solutions. Don't tell folks to buy your info product to get the answers they need.
5. Pace yourself. Tweeting every five minutes is a good way to lose followers. If you’re going to tweet something, make it good. Encourage someone, send a link to a great blog post or video, make someone laugh or promote someone else by talking about the good experience you’ve had with them.
6. Be yourself! Be authentic and let others see your personality shine. Even be a little silly once in awhile. Life is too short not to have some fun! And yes by all means, if you’re doing all of these things DO talk about your latest blog post or ezine with a link or a video you’ve posted. If you’re being genuine and having meaningful exchanges with others, they will appreciate knowing how and where to get more high quality content from you. (just don’t overdo it!)

The bottom line is, yes absolutely Twitter is extremely important for your business because of the relationships you’re building and the potential to connect with people you might not otherwise dream of meeting. However, the success and growth of your business should be a byproduct of the image you’re projecting on Twitter, how you are carrying yourself and the quality of information you're putting out there, not a direct result of a sales pitch. By being yourself, being positive and consistently posting quality content, you can expect to gain new friends, business contacts and yes, even clients and customers because people will get to know the real you not some scripted, commercialized version of yourself.