What The Heck Is “Twitter” & Why Use It?

You've no doubt heard of Facebook and Myspace...  But here is a new site, you might want to try for your business growth~ Twitter!

Two Reasons To Try It:

#1. To keep your clients notified of anything new and exciting in your practice such as a new technique or new service you are offering.

#2. To generate interest from other "Twitters" and possibly get new clients by using it to market yourself and your practice.

I have only started just recently, but Twitter is pretty cool, and I wouldn't consider myself a very advanced user in the social networking arena.

What It Is:

The simple premise is you use Twitter to tell people (who follow you) what you are doing at that moment. You only have 140 characters to say it so it has to be short and to the point, but more importantly it has to be relative AND entertaining, or people will stop caring.

Your short messages (called tweets) go out instantly so it is much easier than blogs or email.

You can type in a keyword, such as "massage" and "your city" and anyone with massage and/or the city in their profile or tweet will come up. You'll see if there is anyone who you want to 'follow' and all you do is click on the 'follow' button. Some people block open access to themselves, so you ask permission to follow them, but I figure if it someone who is open to business opportunities, you won't bother with them.

You can follow your favorite personalities, business owners, or anyone else who has a twitter account who you find interesting. By clicking to "follow" a person on twitter, you are notified when you log in to twitter each time they update a new message (post a tweet).

The people you follow may provide helpful resources, ideas, suggestions and a huge variety of other important tidbits that can help you personally as well as professionally.

People search Twitter for topics of interest. The words in Tweets are searchable so from a marketing standpoint it is important to use words you want to be found, such as health, wellness, pain or stress relief, etc. Your posts should of course be related to your business, or you.

At first when I went to someone's Twitter account, I was confused and didn't understand why it seemed so jarbled, but now I understand if you go to a single account, such as mine.

Go to mine:http://www.twitter.com/IreneDiamond you'll see my posts (called a "stream", but also my responses to other people's posts all in on row, so it is kind of crazy. Once you understand that, it all makes sense. (Be sure to Follow Me! @IreneDiamond and @massageresource)

You can send a Twitter post by logging in on the web, from a web enabled cellphone or even from a voice to text service. One of the things people do is put a URL in their tweet to their website or some other webpage that they want their followers to go, so it can drive traffic there almost instantly. If you are hosting events, workshops, offering specials, or anything else, tweet about it and it'll get out to your followers in record time. (Because you only have 140 characters, you can shorten weblinks by using services such as www.tinyurl.comor www.snurl.com.)

Once you get your account set up, be sure to mention it in your other marketing such as email signatures, newsletters, and websites and encourage people to follow you.

There are some tools available as free downloads that help you manage Twitter.

A few of them are www.Twhirl.org, Twitdeck.com, HootTweet.com, and GetSnitter.comdesigned to show you messages that are happening in real time, or in Twitter you'll need to continually refresh your view. Once your followers get to a large size it may be hard for you to respond directly to individuals. There is a tool called TweetScan.com that allows you to actually see who responded to you and you can also set up an alert to be notified. Similarly there is another tool called TwitterMail. These tools allow you to go and set up alerts to say, "Tell me anybody who tried to get my attention today."

My Personal Experience: Like I said, when we first set up my account, we did a search for "Massage", and "followed" about 50 people who had massage in their profile or posts. Within a week we had about 8 people who followed me and now we are continuing to grow every week.

Within the first week, we also had 6 people sign up to be on the waiting list for http://www.SuccessfulMassageTherapist.org I can see a lot of potential in incorporating Twitter into your business model. It's very easy to post, and a good way to keep your business in front of your customer's eyes. But a word of warning!

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