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How can an online service that only lets you write 140 characters per message be worth using to build your business or further your career? After all, it seems to be full of MLM marketers, life coaches and people who are only too happy to tell you exactly what they are doing, every 10 minutes of their day! 

Twitter can be a powerful way to make connections, get feedback, test headlines and put your finger on the pulse of what is hot in your industry – in fact, Twitter can be an asset if used for good, not evil.  Indulge me for a moment while I highlight some very useful strategies that will make your online efforts simply Twitterific.

1. Connect With Likeminded People

Regardless of whether you are employed, unemployed or self employed, Twitter may just be the best place on the internet to  connect with people who are professionals in your field –  Twellow, Just Tweet It and Tweetdeck can help you to locate them quickly and easily.  Once you are following them, consider responding to questions they have, Re Tweet their posts, or initiate a conversation that mentions them or invites others to follow them. This will increase the likelihood of them following you back and the start of a beautiful friendship.  People tend to be more likely to buy from and do business with people who they like – so take your time to build a solid relationship.

2. Relationship First, Sales Second

As with other mediums, there is a right and a wrong way to promote your products or services Twitter.  Invest in the relationship with your followers.  Write helpful information, ask and answer questions, post links to only your best articles/blogs/videos, help others to get their content further by re tweeting and refrain from posting links to your own site/blog/videos more than once a day.  Be on the look-out for interesting content and valuable information – always give credit to the work of others when you quote or mention it.  Make it easy for people on your website to find you on Twitter (and other social media sites) and ensure your Twitter page mentions clearly what you do, your websites and products/services.  If your followers like what you have to say, they can easily connect with your website to learn more about what you do and how they might be able to work with you.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

If you have a link that you want your followers to re tweet, the best thing that you can do is simply ask.   Being upfront and asking for what you want is an excellent strategy – I have found that most people want to help and are very generous with their time.  In fact, most will go out of their way to help you if you simply ask.  Be respectful of this privilege and always remember to say thank you.  If you can, return the favor.  Gratitude has a way of attracting even more positive energy and success.

4. Filter Out The Unnecessary

A person could waste hours online following all of the Twitter posts.  If you want to filter out all the irrelevant stuff and only focus on what or who is important to you, think of Tweetdeck as your new best friend.  Tweetdeck allows you to separate your contacts into columns, prioritize the people you want to follow and watch who is mentioning you and your profile.  By simply typing “http://” in the filter box into the box, you can locate all the great links your friends have found throughout the day.  “RT @” will give you all the links that people found to be good enough to Re Tweet. You can also search for username, keyword and time of a post.

5.  Concentrate on Key Followers

Twitter will allow most users under normal conditions to follow up to 2000 others.  That’s a lot of people to watch and correspond with at one time.  If you have attracted many followers who do not share your interests there is now an easy way to cull this down without having to unfollow each of them one at a time.  Using a simple service like Tweetpular to bulk unfollow people who are not following you can help you to get your list back down to a manageable amount – or at least down to the ones who are actually interested in getting to know more about you.

6.  Be Relevant

Watch the Recent trends column on your homepage to see what others are talking about.  This column often contains a list of topics and “hashtags” that are receiving a large percentage of posts.  To increase the number of your followers consider following these trends by posting comments that are on point and relevant.  Hashtags were developed as a means to create groupings on Twitter.  You can create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.  This allows others to search, filter and post for all relevant comments on a topic, quickly and easily. 

Twitter is an amazing tool for personal and business applications. Everyday new applications and tools come online to streamline your efforts and help to make Twitter easier to use and manage.  With a little effort and help, Twitter can become a useful tool and an excellent resource to build relationships, increase brand awareness and generate sales.