Last week I got an email from someone who saw me speak on the subject of using Twitter for small businesses.  It was titled “Help Please – slightly ranty and desperate”.

Having been a Twitter for some months, this small business owner was feeling like a child coming home and saying “no-one wants to play with me”.  She was frustrated that she didn’t seem to be able to attract new followers, nor be able to get her own tweets retweeted.

This is what I emailed back:

Sounds like you need to stop focusing on the numbers and start focusing on the results that you are looking to achieve on Twitter.  Twitter is never going to be successful as a business tool if you are only trying to increase your follower numbers and increase the number of Retweets you get.

Step away and take time to sort out a strategy for Twitter.  What are you trying to achieve, who do you want to be connecting with and what impact is Twitter going to have on your business?

If it feels like no-one wants to play with you, it is probably because you are hiding in the corner. Most children ignore children who do that, don’t they?  Get out there, introduce yourself, have conversations – join in with the party and people will want to play with you.

The following day, I got tweet back from this small business owner.  It simply said:

“I was missing out the “social” bit of social networking, you are such a clever girl!”

That’s exactly right!  The all important word is social.

If you feel you are being ignored, then don’t wait to be asked to play.  Start your own games and join in with the party.

Twitter isn’t right for everyone.  I know – shock horror!! But it’s true.

There has been so much hype about Twitter over the past year that it can be easy to get sucked in to and feel that everyone is on Twitter already and you should be doing it too.

I was speaking at the 1230 AOB conference yesterday in Bromley to a group of ladies about Twitter.  In the morning Claire Young from The Apprentice gave a very interesting talk about her career and the journey that made her a TV star.  It was great that she referred to Twitter – but I had to cringe as she stood there in front of the audience to tell everyone that Twitter was to become THE most important marketing tool within the next 2 years and as she made £10,000 of business from it in the last 2 months, everyone should be tweeting too.

These are dangerous words and I worry that for every hype story like this, there are a dozen or more so being banded around.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Twitter. As many of you who read my blog may know, I use Twitter in my own business and help many clients integrate it in to their marketing and business plans too.

But to be telling everyone that they should be on Twitter is not something I recommend, and especially to an audience of self-employed professionals and small business owners.  And these are reasons why.

Don’t use Twitter if:
 
1. You are a Magpie. A magpie is notorious for swooping down and collecting sparkly, shining objects and taking them back to their nests.  And many business owners act like magpies too.  They see a new sparkly toy (Twitter!), swoop in and spend the next few days and weeks playing around with it.  It’s easy to start wasting time, but also to forget to spend time with the stuff that actually works already, such as networking, sending out their next email newsletter or making those follow up calls.  So not only does Twitter distract them until the next new sparkly toy turns up, the stuff that used to work for them, stops working for them.

2. You don’t know your target client.  Like any marketing and business tool, if you are not totally clear on exactly who your target client is, don’t go near Twitter.  Using Twitter without understanding your target clients will be like throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks.  Start with your clients first before deciding whether Twitter is a tool for you.

3. You hate being “you”. If your website is very “corporate” and talks about your business in terms of the “royal we” without any photo or mention of you – the business owner behind the business – then Twitter is going to be a hard slog for you.  Twitter works best when your Twitter profile is humanised.  For example, the avatar is a picture of the person behind the tweets, rather than a logo (or even worse, a clip art image!).  The tweets are mixed in with real-life comments, rather than a series of bot-like tips & article links.  And there is conversation in the form of @replies, rather than a series of scheduled adverts.

So be careful of falling for the Twitter hype.  Twitter can be a very powerful business tool, but like any other marketing or business tool, it has to be right you, your business model and, more importantly, your clients.

What are your thoughts on using Twitter?  And where would you recommend starts if they plan to start using Twitter?

There is an awful lot of advice out there (me included!) that talk about automating Twitter; talk about being able to schedule your tweets using devices such as TweetLater; talk about automatically updating your Facebook postings with Twitter.  All of which save you time to be able to spend so that your marketing is working more effectively for you.

But doesn’t this automation actually go against what Twitter is all about?  Twitter to be used as a conversation tool?

During the proactive times of my business, I schedule my tweets on a Monday morning, using a system like Tweetlater.

One of these scheduled tweets  a couple of weeks ago, included this recommendation as a tip and somebody came back to me with a tweet “Yes, but this automation is all very well, but isn’t Twitter about conversation and not automation?”

Great point!  Being totally automated on Twitter is extreme and I wouldn’t recommend it.

But by automating some of your tweets throughout the day and week, these can actually help generate your conversation.

You can’t be on Twitter 24 hours a day; you’ll go mad!  And you would probably drive your business to the ground.

But by having certain tweets giving out tips and information when you are not actually live on Twitter can actually help people respond back to you and start a conversation.  When you do log back in to Twitter, you can respond back and have that two-way conversation.

So is Twitter about automation or about conversation?

It is about both.  You need to automate some aspects of Twitter to be able to remain sane, to be able to develop it and drive it forward as a marketing tool for your business.  But if you automate too much it becomes lose the power because Twitter is about conversation, it is about replying and about building relationships.

Your thoughts and opinions: How much do you automate on Twitter? Or do you use Twitter for real-time tweets only?  Leave your comments in the comments box below.

When you go looking for something on the web, the first place you probably go to is good old Google.  Whether you want to find an answer to a burning question, a local website designer or the best cleaning product for that red wine stain on your carpet, Google tends to be the first point of call.

But have you ever used Twitter search?

Whether you use twitter or not, there is no doubt that Twitter is being used by millions of people across the world today tweeting about everything from what they had for lunch today to what their latest business tip are.

Those 140 character text-like webpages are being published by their thousands, every second of every day, giving anyone who wants to know the very latest thoughts, links and ideas of every conceivable topic you could think of.

But what does that mean to you?  How does all this information have an impact on you and your business?

What all this information means is an up to the second account of what is being said about, gossipped about, moaned about and raved about the very topic of what you are basing your business on. 

Let me give you an example:  A nutritional therapist specialises in helping people eat more healthily so they can lose weight and feel slimmer.  This person wants to put together a group coaching programme to help ladies get in to shape before their summer holidays [yup, you know what I mean don't you, ladies - that thought of getting in to a bikini can send shudders down your spine, can't it!!]. But before the programme gets put together and launched, the nutritional therapist needs to do a bit of market research to make sure the right content is included and there are potential clients who would buy this programme.

One easy and simple way of finding out what people are talking about right here and now is to go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in a key word or key phrase relating to what you want to find more about. 

For this particular nutritional therapist, they could try a range of phrases such as “fat day” or “lose weight + holiday” [you can see the results for this phrase here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=lose+weight+%2B+holiday ]

So, don’t just rely on Google for the latest search results – especially as Google only shows what has been indexed by Google, rather than what is actually published on the internet – check out what people are tweeting about.

Your inbox is full to the brim. You have a ton of messages in your facebook account. You have had upteen invitations to connect on LinkedIn.  And your Twitter stream is flowing so fast you have trouble keeping up with every tweet, link and reply.

It’s no wonder that every so often you can feel overwhelmed!

Yet, as a business owner you can’t afford to get stuck in to-do-list mode for long.   When you are spending almost 100% of your week working “in” the business – delivering your client work, sending out information packs, responding to emails – your business will soon grind to halt.

Why? Because your business will start to stagnate, shrink or, at worst, fail rather than grow and develop.  You lack the time to evaluate what is working and understand where you may be able to expand or deliver new services.  Your business creativity dries up and you become a slave to your inbox.

Mari Smith announced last week that she was embarking on a 2 month speaking tour and unplugging herself from facebook, twitter and her inbox.  And I greatly admire her for her brave and bold decision to do this.  Her business will no doubt flourish even further than it has done already as she will have the opportunity to embrace new opportunities and perhaps, even turn her business on its head.

Having just come back from a week’s holiday in the sun, I took great pleasure in leaving my inbox to my VA.  And I didn’t even schedule tweets or blog postings in my absence.  I needed to unplug.  And yes, I have felt my business creativity return once again.

So, when are you going to switch it all off?  Even for just 24 hours?

I was speaking at a networking lunch this week sharing some tips and ideas on how to use blogging in one’s business.  And the same old question came up “But doesn’t all that stuff take a lot your time?”

Let’s get this straight. All marketing takes time!

Driving to a networking lunch, spending 2 hours eating, talking and sharing business ideas, driving back from to your office, following up any contacts you met and sending them the info you promised – this all takes time!

Is it time well spent?  Well, hopefully yes especially if you met some interesting new contacts and some of those new contacts told others about you and your business.  Networking is an incredibly effective marketing tool.

So, why wouldn’t using tools like blogging, twitter, facebook and all the other social tools out there take time to use, too?

And if the time you spend on twitter, facebook and writing your blog is used effectively – it will be time well spent too!

PLUS! anything you do online has the added benefit of being there forever.  Blog posts, twitter links and facebook photos can be found today, tomorrow and forever more.  So, yes blogging and social media does take up your time but before you use a lack of time as an excuse not to use these tools in your business, ask yourself how effective your marketing time is at the moment?