How Well Do You Tweet?

Home » Business, Entreprenette, Innovative ideas, Marketing, Sales, Twitter

9 June 2010 6 CommentsBy Sarah Shaw

It seems to me that everyone wants to tweet, should be tweeting…..often is tweeting…..but isn’t always sure how, what, when or why to be tweeting! My Entreprenette Experts have pulled through again and offered some great tips on how to gain the attention of your followers. Enjoy!

1. Best Tweet Practices

My best selling tweets: Use your tweets like cookie crumbs to your site. Find creative uses for your product without self-promoting. Plug something relevant that your product compliments and link it back to your site. Don't just think of the direct ways to bring an idea to fruition, but also indirectly should someone stumble upon something that brings them back to you.

Thanks to: Christina Lor of Ergonomix Public Relations.

2. Find a Tweeter in Need

My best selling tweets: Use the search function in Twitter to find people who are tweeting about needing your product. If they are tweeting about being tired at work, and you sell a new energy drink, offer them a free sample in exchange for a retweet of your offer or a blog write up, if they have one. Just keep it non-spammy. Everyone likes free stuff it it comes across as genuine. Tell the tweeter you might be able to help them out and offer a free sample, customers will follow.

Thanks to: Anthony Adams of The Hangover Cure.

3. Cool it w/ the SELL Preaching.

My best selling tweets: Nothing will get one unfollowed faster than if all you are tweeting about is Selling a Product. Twitter is more about conversations and connections than a selling platform. In my opinion you only want to post about your items, 10-20% of the time. However, one good way to get your product in front of viewers, is to ask for opinions. Do you like this color? Do you like this photo? What would you use this for? etc. You might want to link to a blog post so people can leave a comment.

Thanks to: Andy Mathis of Andy Mathis Art Co..

4. Thank Celebs for Exposure

My best selling tweets: @nottjmiller - Looking great in the Sexy Slang Stud Muffin tee! So pumped to see #shesoutofmyleague Heard you are hilarious!

Thanks to: Christi Scofield of Sexy Slang.

5. Info+Engagement+Trust=Sales

My best selling tweets: I know not of one single tweet that generated instant sales for products or services. Twitter is a tool for users to engage and inform their followers. Twitter conversations, referrals (often in the form of retweets) lead people to websites/landing pages and often result in sales. In my case of selling a service, trust is important. A need leads to exchange of information and ideas, followed by contact off Twitter and a working relationship.

Thanks to: Gail Sideman of PUBLISIDE Personal Publicity.

6. 'Go Naked!' - food wise!

My best selling tweets: Curious about something you eat/don't or think you should? Ask me....

Are you 'Skinny Fat'? http://bit.ly/caBYYz. Something to think about.....

What shall I have to drink?...& not pile on the calories? http://bit.ly/dktih8

The average meal travels 1500m from the farm to the supermarket! Buy local http://www.localharvest.org/

Want more energy, better moods, more stamina? How about answers to your problems…? Then read this http://bit.ly/caBYYz

Thanks to: Dawn Peters of Naked Health LLC.

7. Tweeter Di Tweeter Dum

My best selling tweets: I try to use what's going on to create Twitter posts that zing. For example, if it's bitter cold, I have used "You could be sitting by the pool, sipping a cold drink, or walking along warm sandy beaches" idea. If Dancing with the Stars or Idol is on everyone's mind I use "Learn ballroom dancing onboard" or "Show off your skills in the Passenger Talent Show". "Sex and the City " on the brain? Let me put you on a camel in style!. Use "hooks" that make the clients feel special and connected.

Thanks to: Sandy Wheeler of Sandy Wheeler Travel Specialties.

8. Tweet for twits

My best selling tweets: The Twit has to have some sense of humor and be catchy enough or brazen enough to make people click to a tiny url. If you are selling B2B you need to show something that will make their job easier - like CIO promoted to CEO, career not over see how "tinyurl".

If you tweet a lot and have a good following you can put in all caps MUST READ of GREAT LINK but only do this if you have high credibility and only use it once a quarter or you'll get flamed. Good luck! Follow me: PJSweeney

Thanks to: Patrick Sweeney of ODIN - RFID Experts.

9. Use KEYWORDS not HASH-TAGS

My best selling tweets: Google integrated real-time search by syndicating twitter stream.
Twitter search also continues to be a valuable place for businesses to learn human's life-streaming and trends.
For you to reach your TWEET & outbound your followers circle, you need to do your homework of a well-optimized message.
Before I share my tip, know that Google dislike tweets that contains much Hash-Tags (e.g #Franchise #Business)
In 140 limit Tweet your main keywords without hash-tags in same SEO keywords style.

Thanks to: Omar Aloyoun of e-buziness.com.

10. The FREE Offer

My best selling tweets: Undestand your loved one's personality style and improve our communication with them - FREE download - www.CommunicationSkillsMagic.com

Thanks to: E.G. Sebastian of E.G. Performance Solutions.

11. Get Eye-Ball to Eye-Ball

My best selling tweets: Up until a few months, twitter has been a fun biz tool for me to connect with peers online. Then everything changed. How? Twitter became real and powerful for me.
I did something different, I met my 2 of my tweeple in person! As a result I got great ideas for marketing via social media AND referral business.
Meeting in person, getting eyeball-to-eyeball created a powerful & profittable connection. Take a minute & see who you can arrange to meet in person.

Thanks to: Kim Halverson of Prudential CA Realty.

12. Participate in Twitter Memes

My best selling tweets: I would totally recommend participating in popular non-offensive Twitter memes like #followfriday or #musicmonday. You learn more about your followers, and in turn, can help market your product towards them on a more familiar level. A win-win!

Thanks to: Maurice Cherry of Black Weblog Awards.

13. Good Info Occasional Opinions

My best selling tweets: I have had really tremendous success building my social network through twitter by providing useful information about the community and the occasional personal comments or opinions on world affairs. It has attracted huge regional, national, and some international media attention as well as followers in the tourism, entertainment, green, body, mind, spirit and social networking communities.

Thanks to: Duane Burnett of Duane Burnett Productions.

14. Be helpful or conversational..

My best selling tweets: The best promo tweets I have done have provided a tip with the promo, or sounded conversational rather than promotional. Also, be sure to put the link in the middle of your Tweet.. seems to entice more clicks.

Some examples:

Focus on your strengths. If you absolutely suck at it or hate it, outsource it. www.yoursite.com

Just wrapped up a press release for new client. www.yoursite.com if you need a bit of help with yours! :D

Thanks to: Cori Padgett of Big Girl Branding.

15. Tweet a Coupon

My best selling tweets: As a product based business I will occasionally post a tweet with a "tweet" coupon code. The great thing about using a tweet specific coupon is you know the sale came directly from your tweet, plus there are a lot of coupon trackers on twitter who will virally pass around your code. If you can afford to offer a discount I highly recommend posting about it on twitter!
Here's a tweet I posted using the coupon: Save 15% on all Father's Day Gifts www.BookBouquet.com coupon code "tweet".

Thanks to: Kim Shanahan of Book Bouquet.

16. Your 100th tweet

My best selling tweets: Instead of focusing on the "one" sales or promo tweet, instead focus on the 99 tweets leading up to it.

Twitter is all about building relationships. If all you do is tweet about your product or service, people will unfollow you. Take the time to build relationships, tweet about your non-work activities, share helpful info, retweet others' tweets, @ people and get to know them.

THEN write that one great sales tweet--and people will read it because you've spent time connecting with them.

Thanks to: Diana Scimone of The Born2Fly Project.

17. Tease them with your tweets

My best selling tweets: We blog nearly every day, and typically those tweets about the blog post of the day draws in the traffic that buys our product. Obviously the better the teaser and the more exciting the story, the more people come. For example, we always have the "Top 5 Chocolate Bar Names" of the week and some of those names (like "Sizzling Bacon Breakfast") just make everyone curious.

Thanks to: Carmen Magar of chocri.

18. Write The Best Tweet Ever

My best selling tweets: Here's the trick: Go out and buy "Headless Body In Topless Bar". Look at how the New York Post has put together memorable headlines that quickly describe the story. That's what you need to do with your tweets. Keeping them brief and descriptive is only part of it. You need to tell the whole story as efficiently as you can to stand above the noise.

Thanks to: Brandon Mendelson of Earth's Temporary Solution.

19. Questions & Conversations

My best selling tweets: @FranchiseCo
-Ask questions where the answer is your product/service: Business licensing or franchising? What are my options? What are the facts? http://bit.ly/aL2egb
-Ask questions related to timely events (Lost finale): Feeling "Lost"? Tired of your J.O.B.? How about starting your own business or buying a franchise. See http://bit.ly/aL2egb
-Start conversations: "More Workers Quitting" http://yhoo.it/b3RbO3 Are you one of them? Why? What are you looking to do? Where are the opportunities?

Thanks to: Gail Parker of FranchiseSforSale.com.

6 Comments »

DawnV said:
Excellent advice! Thanks to all the contributors. I especially liked #16. It’s all about the ones leading up to the BIG promotional tweet. Too many people on twitter are just pushing products.

# 9 June 2010 at 10:28 am
Karla said:
Great article – thanks for sharing! I needed some inspiration to start using Twitter more effectively for my business – this did it!

# 9 June 2010 at 4:17 pm
Phyllis {My Wedding Concierge} said:
Great article – absolutely correct – twitter is about building relationships. One thing that will get you unfollowed immediately is the Automatic DMs that get sent out to new followers. People seem to hate that.

# 17 July 2010 at 8:15 pm
Duane Burnett said:
Thanks so much for including me in your article about better tweeting! Much appreciated. Everyone brought some awesome tips together. All the best, Duane Burnett http://twitter.com/duaneburnett

# 18 July 2010 at 3:12 pm
Peter said:
I tend to do no. 14 often, but my favorite out of the list is no. 2.

# 27 February 2011 at 1:01 pm
Roundhouse said:
I am #15. Total coupon junkie. I also follow a lot of other coupon junkies as well. Fun article.

EDI

# 12 May 2011 at 5:27 pm