“The BIG Idea of the Week” video series continues. We’re chatting with entrepreneurs and personalities whose areas of expertise can help small businesses succeed. From helping you generate leads, to growing your online presence and becoming the go-to person in your industry, these experts will share their insights in our video interviews.
This week we had Joe Manna, Senior Content Strategist at Infusionsoft, who has used Twitter almost from the very beginning. He now has tweeted more than 36,000 times and has a large following on the social media site.
Joe says that in the beginning, Twitter was solving the need to stay in touch with friends similar to text messaging. There were no hash-tags, the ability to reply or the use of links weren’t there either; it was just conversations.
“The concept of Twitter is basically sharing short updates that are meaningful,doing it in 140 characters at a time. The benefit of doing that is that it forces you to be concise; it forces you to be clear in what you’re trying to say,” says Manna.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses from all over the world have already discovered the benefits of Twitter and use the site often in order to get their message out. Manna says anyone can use Twitter and see results, but you must be consistent in doing so and show you care.
“For a small business owner you really want to get in the habit of finding the conversation, and really generating that conversation with people…not only do you have to be there but you have to be present and be active,” says Manna.
Engaging in social media conversations can help generate leads.
Manna says that making your Twitter account business or personal is up to all of us. Question is how do we want to be perceived by others? and once that is decided, we can begin growing our brand.
Developing a personal brand on Twitter allows you to share your ideas in a way that makes sense. Make yourself a real person. If you’re using the site to promote or grow your business, it’s recommended to use your company logo for the main picture but make yourself available as a representative of your business. If you reply to messages or tweets, say you’re doing it. A common practice is the use of carrots (^) to show who is on the other end of your company reaponse. Like ^ June B. This helps build a personal relationship with you and your brand.
Now, as we all now, time can be an issue for most entrepreneurs, and tweeting may be the least of your worries, but the truth is that social media is an amazing asset that we all should leverage to help our business or personal brand grow and be known in the world.
If you’re in fact starting off on Twitter, Manna has a few suggestions…
“The first thing you want to do is only follow the people you care about. Follow the brands, follow the people- your co-workers, your family- people you actually care about. The benefit of doing that is you will get more value out of Twitter when you only follow the people that provide value to you.
“The conversation is happening right now, and if you’re not in it someone else is,” says Manna.
Manna also says that setting some time aside to tweet is essential. Thirty minutes to an hour is good, and of course, consistency is very in the social media world.
So get out there, tweet tweet and have fun.
While you’re at it, tweet at us @BigIdeasBlog or @JoeManna. We’re excited to start the conversation with you!
For more tips on developing social media strategy, check out, “From So-So to Social.”
About June Brockmeyer
