How to Use Twitter Professionally

It’s fairly clear how Twitter can be cool for personal use, correct? Friends follow each other and communicate via 140 characters or less. It’s a slightly more social version of texting. When it comes to business, it gets more complicated, because we have sales goals. We want to sell things. We want to make money. So how can you use Twitter to make money?

Here’s the thing, if making money directly on Twitter is your goal, you will be best served to simply stay away. Twitter can absolutely be a big part of your internet presence, but direct money-making goals aren’t gonna fly in this arena. Sorry.

The Novice Approach

I understand there’s a lot of novices (some of them are just fools, but most simply don’t know what they’re doing) out there, and they’re setting up multiple Twitter profiles, blasting out direct sales messages all day long. Most of these sales messages contain affiliate links or links to sales pages they’ve created. Perhaps they’ve invested in some course that guaranteed them that by doing this they’d make $10,000 a month on Twitter. I don’t know. The point is that this is not the purpose of Twitter, and by doing this they’re only making themselves a nuisance. It’s like going to a huge party and instead of going inside to hang, these people flier everyone’s windshield and leave. It’s rude. It creates no value, only litter. And it does not create a professional impression for them or their company. Also, it’s not effective. All those fliers end up in the trash.

How the Pros Do it

So how do you conduct yourself professionally on Twitter when you’re trying to run a business? The key is to embrace the social aspect of this huge network of people. The fact is that most people on Twitter are good people. It’s a party, and you’re invited. This analogy of course has been used before, but it’s true. Don’t flier the cars, just go inside and have fun.

How can this possibly bring in more business? Since when is networking not a good way of drumming up business? It’s age old…it’s a legacy way of getting new business. It’s proven; it’s effective. It works! But you don’t walk into a networking function or a gathering of any kind and just start pinning your business card to everyone’s lapel. You talk to people. Your business is what you do all day. Trust me, it’s gonna come up! How many new people have you ever met in real life who didn’t eventually ask what you do for a living? It usually comes up in your first conversation. Twitter is the same. Don’t forget that social rules have not changed just because our modes of communication have evolved a bit.

The way you conduct yourself professionally on Twitter is the same way you’d conduct yourself at any other social event in real life. Very simple, I know. But simple is good, right? Social networking is a huge way to leverage and expand your internet presence, drive traffic to your site and get new business. Conduct yourself professionally, and you will do well.