Who to follow on Twitter for your small business
So you’ve all heard about Twitter and how its supposed to be the next big thing after you get your head around this Facebook tsunami! As part of our Social Media and SEO house-cleaning, I decided to take a look at what we were doing with our own Twitter account and how I could get it to start adding real value to our business. I won’t go into the reasons why you should be looking at Twitter for your business (besides the fact that Singapore is amongst the top ten countries with the greatest Twitter penetration) – but there’s a heap of great resources on the web. The first thing you’ll need to do after setting up you account is to figure out what you want to get out of Twitter. Its a great way to brand your business, communicate with customers or showcase your expertise. Depending on your plan, you can use these tips and tools to get started with building up your Twitter Friends and Followers.
Find Followers through your Email Address Book
The first thing to do is to import your contacts from your email address book. Twitter will dig into your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL Mail accounts to find friends and business associates who are already on Twitter… This makes it dead simple to connect with the people that already matter most to your business. Head over to the Find Friends tab in your Twitter profile and you can easily import email contacts and start following them.
Tip You can import contacts from multiple email accounts on Twitter so I’d suggest you get your whole business team to authorize Twitter to acces their email contacts so you dont miss out on any of your business associates and customers.
Search by your business area of interest
Whether you sell widgets or services, you’ll be in an industry that has thought leaders, networkers and business people who are already active on Twitter. The best way to find these people is to identify Twitter users who are discussing your industry by searching for keywords (or perhaps buzzwords) that are relevant for your business. Head on over to the Browse Interest tab in Twitter and you’ll be presented with a list of categories. You’ll most likely want to use the Search box on the top to type in relevant terms for your business.
Here’s an example of the types of people you’ll find for the search term “digital agency“. Run thru the list to explore the most interesting people on Twitter that are discussing the topics and issues that matter in your industry. Follow the people who you find thoughtful, insightful, or in some way useful to your business. Then drop them a little tweet and start the conversation.
Next Steps
These 2 simple steps should have you started with at least 100 relevant people and organisations to follow. Now the next step is to listen and engage with those who matter in your industry. This is the best way to build relationships and grow your own followers.
