What Is Your Twitter Strategy?

A young adult asked: “I need help with regard to Twitter. I log on daily and don’t have a productive plan on how to effectively use it in a business sense. Any advice on how I can attack this in a productive manner will be much appreciated.”

First, it’s impressive that this young adult realized that a productive plan is needed to use Twitter for business. Second, I like the phrase “attack this in a productive manner.”

Why do I like the phrase “attack this in a productive manner”? Because using Twitter effectively is similar to planning a battlefield strategy. Now, of course, we don’t want to crush the other people on Twitter. But we do want to figure out how to engage in a way that they pay attention to what we’re doing.

First I recommended reading my Twitter business articles whose links are at the bottom of my bio at Site-Booster.com — https://www.site-booster.com/blog/2009/09/phyllis-zimbler-miller-profile/

Then I said the next step would be to write a bullet point list of what the person would like to achieve on Twitter, including which areas of interest to focus on.

Let’s say the person is interested in restoring antique cars. Now will this be a hobby or a business? First, the Twitter profile should reflect this primary focus and whether this is a hobby or a business.

We’ll say for now it’s a hobby that you would like to turn into a business.

So you do a search (using Twitter search functions as well as third-party search applications) on words related to restoring antique cars. And we’ll say you find recent tweets from five different Twitter users with keywords relating to restoring antique cars.

The first thing is to follow these five people and then to engage with them in conversation about antique cars. For example, one of these people might tweet a question about needing help finding a part. If you know the answer, you would send a public tweet reply with the answer.

And if you are on Twitter every day engaging in conversation on this topic, you will be drawn into a wider conversation as you follow other people who engage about antique cars with your first five antique car Twitter users.

By sharing in this conversation you are beginning to establish yourself as someone with knowledge on the subject as well as someone who is wiling to share this knowledge.

When you are ready to take the next step, you get a website that supports your planned business of restoring antique cars and you put the link to your website on your Twitter profile. Now at your website you collect email addresses by offering a compelling freebie such as “7 Tips for Restoring an Antique Car.”

And every so often on Twitter you can tweet about this freebie report. You can also tweet that you’ll answer questions on Twitter about antique car restoration. Also, you can create your own Twitter list of antique car aficionados.

While you may tweet about other things to demonstrate you are not a one-dimensional person, your battlefield strategy for engagement on Twitter will center around taking part in antique car conversations.

With attention to detail as in any good battlefield plan and staying focused on the prize, you should be able to carry out a productive business strategy on Twitter.

Author Bio: Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. She writes numerous articles and posts throughout the Internet, including for the blog at her company website www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com. Grab her FREE report on ???How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert???