The biggest mistake online and offline businesses make on Twitter is using the wrong approach in their sales strategy. They often try to sell directly on Twitter and this results in affronted Twitter followers and poor sales. This article shows how to properly funnel your Twitter followers into your sales channels without offending them.

1. First Engage with them only on Twitter – this means you need to develop a relationship with your Twitter followers only on the site. This helps to solidify your relationship with them, makes them trust you and also gives you a better understanding of their needs, wants and desires. Taking the time to build a relationship provides a good solid foundation for the next steps
2. Link them to your blog or website for free content-as you post new entries to your blog, make sure they are rich in content and then provide links in your tweets to your blog posts. Keep doing this for some time and your followers will get used to your blog or website and probably visit it in their own time too. It is also helpful to have your website or blog URL listed on your Twitter profile.
3. Have an opt-in form on your blog or website- as you link your Twitter followers to your blog, it is important to position your opt-in form strategically above the fold next to the blog post you want them to read. This opt-in form should always have a free offer in exchange for their email address. This is where the benefits of building your relationship in step 1 comes in handy since you will have an understanding of your followers’ needs, wants and desires. Using this information will help you know what free offer will appeal directly to them and increase your opt-in rates
4. Your email list- once your Twitter followers are on your email list and have accessed your free offer, you can now engage in a more direct sales strategy. This strategy is usually more accepted with email marketing rather than social media marketing.

By following this funneling process, you will have better conversions without ruffling the feathers of your Twitter followers.

As Twitter continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, it is essential for any business to have a presence on this site. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of having a Twitter account for your business

Advantages
1. The biggest advantage of Twitter is that it is 100% free. It is free to join and free to participate in. Although there are paid tools that make it easier to manage your account, Twitter offers one of the least expensive ways to grow your business followers. All you need to do is know who to follow and how to tweet and you’re all set
2. Twitter is viral- this means you can leverage on the efforts of other people to publicize your business without you having to do all the grunt work. If you offer great content, it can easily become viral as your posts get retweeted and people create hash tag symbols about your business.
3. Twitter is easy to use- although it is often daunting to newcomers, Twitter is actually a very simple social media platform that even children use. This user-friendly feature is what attracts the millions of people to use it and provides the perfect medium to reach the masses in your niche
4. Twitter is mobile-friendly- with the massive reach of the mobile phone and the groundbreaking monthly sales of smart phones, the Twitter platform marries seamlessly with the mobile platform. This has extended its reach and popularity amongst cell phone users as they can easily post and read tweets on the go from their mobile phones
5. It provides businesses a simple way to combine branding, customer service and sales with one stroke. What would have been handled in a separate and disjointed manner can now be handled on a Twitter account by several employees. Combined with the fact it is free, businesses are reducing their costs and increasing sales with Twitter.

Disadvantages
1. Being an open social media platform, Twitter is vulnerable to spammers that flood the timeline with spam messages and sales links. One needs to check that your followers are not a bunch of spammers but real people, so that you don’t get a false sense about your Twitter popularity.
2. The 140 character limit for Tweets can be a bit of a challenge as you need to be extremely brief and creative with your copywriting skills while still getting your message across.
3. The viral nature can work against you if people don’t like something your business did so you need to be very fast to do any damage control before your whole social network turns against you.

Although some people may frown on automating Twitter accounts, it is obviously useful in certain situations:
1. When you have multiple Twitter accounts
2. When you have multiple people managing one Twitter account such as employees
3. When you have very many new followers on a daily basis and want to respond to each of them
4. When you are on vacation or otherwise occupied with an emergency and still want to keep your Twitter account active
5. When you want to send non-personalized, general information Tweets to all your followers

Automating your Twitter Account

While it’s not possible to automate your Twitter account within Twitter, there are a number of paid and free Twitter management software tools that are available. Here are the most popular ones:

1. Social Oomph- this has both a basic free service and a paid service for more complex activities. One of the things you can do with Social Oomph apart from scheduling your Tweets is having a welcome direct message sent to each of your new followers and this new message can include a link to your blog, website or squeeze page for them to access a special gift for new followers. This provides a fantastic way to automate your list building process
2. HootSuite- if you have many Twitter accounts or just have one account but with many users (such as employees), you can easily manage your tweets using this free Web service. Hootsuite also houses the link-shortening service known as ow.ly and can track each of your shortened links so that you can know which links are getting clicked on and how often. This ability to track your links that you post in your Tweets helps measure your conversion rates and improve your Twitter strategy.
3. Tweetdeck- although it is a paid service, its incredible features are worth mentioning. Tweetdeck is one of the best tools to managing busy business Twitter accounts providing you options such as the ability to sort tweets by topic, keywords, mentions, direct messages and so on. In addition you can see who you are following but aren’t following you back. If you need to keep an eye on your competitors, you can also set it to give you data on all mentions about your competitor or even your niche/industry.

What Should I Tweet About? Tips To Finding Content For Your Twitter Account- Part 2

Here are some more ideas on what to Tweet about :

1. Tweet Answers- your Twitter followers can provide you ideas on what to tweet about through their questions that they ask specifically to you or to the Twittersphere in general. You can find these questions by searching for terms like “questions+ your niche” or “problems + your niche” and then replying to that person by mentioning them in your tweet. In the same vein, you can also tweet your own questions to your followers and get feedback about your business or to just stimulate discussion on a particular topic.
2. Tweet about your blog- you can tweet about your blog content or content on some of your other social media sites such as Facebook, your YouTube channel. All you need to do is provide a link to those sites and direct your followers there.
3. Tweet about authority figures in your niche- this is one way of getting eyeballs to your tweets as people are drawn to the authority or well-known figures in your niche. This requires you to keep tabs on what these celebrity figures are up to and choosing content your followers will find interesting.
4. Tweet about hot topics and trends- the best way to capture people attention is by tweeting about the latest hot topics and trends. Twitter actually displays a list of topics that are trending on the site so keep an eye on topics related to your niche and use the hash tag symbol for those trends in your tweets.
5. Tweet about others- this is probably the easiest way to tweet. You simply retweet other people’s tweets. Of course, you need to find very interesting things to tweet about or there’s really no point to this method.

This article shows you the important parts of your Twitter profile page so that you can easily find your way around it.

1. At the top of your profile page are your names, your Twitter username, your location, your profile description and your website or blog address. If you would like to edit any part of your profile just click on the ‘Edit your Profile’ link

2. On the left panel are the following tabs:
• Tweets- this is a chronological listing of all your tweets. If you hover your mouse over each tweet, you have the options to favorite, reply or delete the tweets. Any tweets you have retweeted will also appear here and will have a distinguishing green marking on the left corner of the tweet.
• Favorites- this lists all your favorite tweets. To mark a tweet as your favorite, go to the Tweets tab, hover over the tweet and click on favorite.
• Following- this shows all the people you are following on Twitter. You have two ways to view this list- by a timeline which shows you how you followed people chronologically or by their names.
• Followers- this shows all the people who are following you.
• Lists- this helps you group people in a specific list so that you can view their Tweets separately from the timeline. It is another way of segmenting your Twitter list into your preferred demographics or interests.

3. On the right panel of your profile page, there is a summary of information about your Twitter account namely:
• How many tweets you have posted
• How many people you are following
• How many people are following you
• Suggestions from Twitter about other users who are similar to you that you may be interested in following