9 Important Factors to Decide If You Should Twitter For Business

<p>You might have been hearing about Twitter, that some gurus claim it is the second most successful communication and sales channel after e-mails and you are wondering whether you should tweet professionally.</p><p>When you are pondering whether you should start to spend the time to tweet professionally there are several factors to consider. As usual the answer is in finding out whether you twittering would create value for your target customers.</p><p>This brings up questions like, what does your target market look like. For example, are they tech-savy and are they using Twitter already or are they maybe tech-adverse and would 'never' touch something like this?</p><p>Would they consider your tweets to their mobile phone a welcome message that would allow them to keep in touch with what you are doing and offering or would they maybe consider your messages an intrusion, even 'spam'?</p><p>Below is a list of factors, originally inspired by David (Berkowitz) for anyone to consider when you are deciding whether it's worth your time to tweet:</p><p><strong>1. Is Your Target Audience Using Twitter:</strong> Is your target audience made up of tech 'first-movers' or are they lagging behind? By using Twitter Search for keywords relevant to your business, you might find people within your target audience. See how many of them are there, which will give you an idea whether Twitter is a good way to target them.</p><p><strong>2. Discussions Already Happening: </strong>Are people on www Twitter discussing topics relevant to your business? If that is the case, then there are opportunities where you can respond and be of help, giving unbiased advice.</p><p><strong>3. Reminding Them That You Are There:</strong> When your 'Twitter Followers' see you tweeting regularly, it doesn't matter so much, whether you deliver great value in every tweet, it just will keep your name and offer fresh in your target audiences mind. Often this is enough to get you the click.</p><p><strong>4. Speed of Getting Your News to Them:</strong> Twittering allows you to get your news to your potential customer's PC or mobile quicker than the competition does. That gives you a competitive advantage since often it is just who makes the offer first, not who offers the greatest value for money. Obviously this depends on the price tag of your product or service.</p><p><strong>5. Your Competition Doesn't Sleep:</strong> How cutthroat is your business sector? Do you need to use everything to stay ahead of your competition? Then Twitter could be a competitive advantage, or a necessary strategy to keep up with what your competition is doing. Use the Twitter tools available to limit your time involvement.</p><p><strong>6. Earning Trust by Using Twitter:</strong> Most of your prospective customers online are total strangers and probably will never meet you in person. That is a disadvantage to any offline business where you can assume meeting some of your customers at one point. Being visible to those strangers i.e. by tweeting about what you do will give future 'Twitter clients' the chance to get to know you a little before they respond to anything you offer or before they check out your site.</p><p><strong>7. Your Location Mentioned:</strong> If your business is based in or focused on a certain city or region, search in Twitter to see what people are saying about it. Then use the Advanced Search feature to find posts from people based within a certain area. There may be ways to be a resource about your area. You can also run location-specific searches for your brands and relevant topics.</p><p><strong>8. Increasing Your Profit Margins by Selling to Your Existing Customers: </strong>Besides e-mail, Twitter is another and new way for your existing customers to keep up with what you are doing. When potential Twitter clients follow your 'soap opera' they get even more loyal to you and are much more likely to re-order from you, with no advertising cost to you, other than your time to do your Twitter updates.</p><p><strong>9. Are your target customers on Twitter, and do you have the (time) resources to reach them?</strong> When you have seen that there are indeed Twitter users that qualify as prospective customers within your target market, you will have to decide whether there is enough potential for your business that justifies the time you will need to invest to twitter yourself or to teach and monitor someone else how-to best Twitter for your business.</p><p>Once you have considered the factors above and others specific to your business, it's time to decide. If you decide you don't need Twitter followers for now, check again in three / six months or so and monitor what your competition is doing. If you decide you want to get a Twitter account and give it a go, start testing the return on your time investment, after some time. And remember, how to Twitter might take some time to master this new way of communicating with new soon-to-be customers.</p><p>Good luck and see you on Twitter.