Twitter, Twitter, Twitter – give me a break! Everyone is talking about how we should implement Twitter into our online businesses but personally I simply can’t see place for it in my business model.

I’m selling ink cartridges, mostly to small business/home based business market and really can’t see any value Twitter could add to my business. I have an eBay shop as well as e-commerce shop. We also do mail orders. Should I just forget about it or I’m getting it all totally wrong?

Your advice highly appreciated, as always!

Thanks,
Tom (Devon)

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your e-mail.

The short answer would be – go for it! Even though it may seem that there’s no place for Twitter in your business, I highly doubt that’s the case. Let’s face it – social media is here to stay, the sooner we realize it the better for business it is, especially in long term.

You may not be passionate about Twitter, Facebook or Youtube BUT your customers are! And that’s the most important thing here – you want to connect with your customers, and if that requires Tweeting, so be it! It’s really not that difficult to set-up and time wise, it will need very little daily attention (5 mins a day)!

Let’s take a look @ some ways to use Twitter for e-commerce businesses (what you can do):

• Tweet about product launches;
• Tweet about up-coming promotions;
• Tweet about special promotions ONLY to Twitter followers (use special coupon code);
• Tweet about your daily business life (company news, pictures etc.)
• Tweet about YouTube video you just uploaded;
• Tweet about customers (testimonials);
• Tweet about industry related news;
• Tweet about your personal life (as a business owner, this directly relates to your target customer base);
• etc.

As you can see - opportunities here are endless!I’m not saying you have to do all of this, not at all but this list just shows that you really shouldn’t struggle with ideas on what to Tweet about.

Just don’t turn it all in one big sales & promotions channel, this way your followers will lose interest in you very fast. From what I have seen, these are 2 best & most effective strategies:

• Personal Strategy – you tweet about your personal life, business, family etc. (as a business person);
• Professional Information strategy – like tutorials, white papers, videos – all industry/niche related. If you can turn your Twitter account into an information source, you’re guaranteed to get many long term followers (potential customers).

Hope this helps & Good Luck with your Twitter activities!

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Thanks,
Andrew

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