Twitter, one of the hottest micro-blogging tools online, offers a great way for you to sell products.
Anyone that has spent anytime on Twitter knows that a lot of the tweets you see are less than useful. Most people tweet everything they are doing all day long and to be honest, no one really cares. But, there are a few that post useful information, however, most of that information is for service based industries.
So, what if your in a product based industry? What options are there for you to help you get product offerings out to potential customers? Well, with Twitter, you can micro-blog (tweet) your products and using a 3rd party site such as TwitPic, you can tweet product photos also.
What’s Needed To Tweet Products?
The first thing you need to do is setup an account with Twitter – it only takes about 5 minutes. Once your account is setup, you can modify color schemes, add a logo, include a link to your website and create a one-line bio. If you’re creative, you can even design a Twitter background that is able to display so much more about your company, products, etc.
Here are a couple of tweeters that follow me – notice their backgrounds:
If your browser window is expanded wide enough, you will see data on the left of the screen with some of these people. Not a bad way to do a little extra advertising on Twitter.
Once you have your Twitter account setup and the design looking good, all you have to do is start posting links to your products. Of course, you’ll want to write something catchy about each product link – example below:
- Brand Your Company with Logo Imprinted Coffee Mugs – http://tinyurl.com/l6rk5c
- Get Out Camping with the Family in a Coleman Tent – http://tinyurl.com/cbca3q
Get the idea? It’s not hard, only takes a few minutes of time each day and before long, you will have a bunch of people following you and clicking through to your site. A recent poll stated that roughly 70% of people following you on Twitter will click on a link if you include it in a post.
How Can You Connect With People On Twitter?
Connecting with people on Twitter and creating a loyal following is pretty easy. Mostly you just need to start tweeting and people will naturally find you. But, there are some other things you can do such as using Twellow, a directory of every person on Twitter and searchable by name and/or category.
Just last week, I setup a Twitter account for a client that sells t-shirts. A lot of their shirts are sports related so a simple search on Twellow for various sports related terms turned up a few hundred individuals. All I had to do was click the “follow” button on their Twitter account and before long, they started following my client. See, it’s common courtesy that when you follow someone, they in turn follow you.
Want To Do More Than Just Tweeting?
How about using a Twitter advertising service to help get your product out to more people? There are lots of Twitter Ad providers out there and most of them are probably reputable but one that I came across the other day has really caught my eye.
Be-A-Magpie, a Twitter Advertising Network, has a large group of “tweeters” that will spend time tweeting about your products to their followers. The great thing is that through this large network of tweeters, they are able to identify members that tweet specifically within your industry, therefore, they viewing audience is better targeted and more likely to click to your site.
So, what are you waiting for? A few minutes of your time may yield hundreds or thousands of additional clicks to your site. And who knows, you may have fun at the same time.
Drop by Twitter, setup an account and get tweeting!
Trevor Walter is senior marketing director and vice president of Freelance Marketing Group www.trevorwalter.com :: www.fmgconsultants.com