| Twitter: A Guide For Sales Professionals |
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| Written by Justyn |
| Tuesday, 03 March 2009 21:12 |
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By now you've heard of Twitter or even dabbled with it. Quite simply, Twitter is a  It also gives you an opportunity to connect with customers, those who are interested in your area of expertise and to crowd-source a very large audience. It is a fantastic resource for sales professionals, but it must be used correctly. I've compiled a short outline of the right and wrong of twitter for Sales Pros. First, here are a few of examples of how Twitter has helped me professionally;
There are plenty of articles on the subject of Twitter, so I want to focus on just the things I feel are important for sales professionals to remember. Twitter is not for prospecting. At least not in the traditional sense. You will likely build relationships that turn into prospects, but don't go into thinking of Twitter as a lead source. It's just not. Add Value. Twitter's tagline "What are you doing?" is partly to blame for the "just ate dinner" and "watching Gossip Girl" tweets. In fact the original intention of Twitter was just that. But it has evolved and from a business perspective your posts need to add value to a reader's day. Especially for people who follow many others and are likely to recieve hundreds of updates per day. Have two Twitter accounts. I use one which consistently adds value to my readers (I hope). The other I use for more informal things like connecting with a vendor or asking questions of my peers. The latter is full of re-tweets and @ responses. I have some of those in my outward facing account as well, but I find that a lot of the communications I have on Twitter aren't necessarily useful to my followers. That's what the second account is for. Note: You'll need a second email address to make a second account. If you use Gmail and have a period in your name (justyn.howard) you can simply exclude the period (justynhoward) and Twitter will recognize it as a seperate email, but it will still go to the same address. ReTweet the good stuff. It's courtesy, adds value to your followers and will likely gain you some additional ones. It's not a popularity contest. Don't start following everyone in hopes that they will follow you back. I only follow people that I have found by way of search to share a common interest, those I want to get new ideas from, or those who have followed me which also have some useful posts of their own. Use Direct Messages (DM's as they are known). If you're having a two-way conversation with someone, use direct messages. These are not shown to all of your followers and keep your timeline clean and useful. When you respond to someone with an @ reply, everyone sees it and because they are only seeing one side of the conversation, it's pretty useless. Include misspellings of your name and industry keywords in your tweets so people can find you. If your name is commonly misspelled, include the misspelling in one of your tweets. This tip was modified from one that was passed on from Jill Konrath regarding LinkedIn, which is another great place to include a misspelling. For more beginner focused information on getting started with Twitter check out this article from CNET . For more advanced twitter tips visit www.twitips.com. I will be including more detail on using Twitter for professional sales purposes in the revision of my book which will be out soon. Subscribe to the blog to stay informed on it's release. Finally, feel free to follow me on Twitter @sellingsmarter.
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way to connect with the world and update them on what you're doing, and vice versa. I didn't see much value in that professionally until I realized it's more than just what you're doing. It's what you're reading, what you're struggling with, what you suggest, how you can help and how you can give back.
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