Twittering Mums

Are you one of the many who joined twitter, tweet away and have no idea what you are doing? You want the 'right' kind of followers? You have no idea what to do with the ones you have?

Then read on...

Twitter is excellent targeted marketing you can reach your customer base and inform them of offers and other tidbits about you and your company. In the case of Essex Mums, it's meeting other local mums.

What happens if you look at who is following you and find it's not your target market?

The first thing to do is look at your twitter strategy, your overall plan on how you are going to make it work for you. If you don't have a plan then perhaps now is the time to make one. Even if it's one or two goals on the back of a bib.

Getting the followers you want....
I live in front of a golf course, my dog escapes onto the golf course and I have tweeted this, I now have a stream of golfers following me, nice but they are not potential customers to me, they are not likely to call me and ask me to deliver a new set of tees to the 9th hole now are they?!!!

They find me because they search for golf. When was the last time you did a tweet search? When did you last do a search on twitter home page for your keyphrases? Go and do one now, do you come up in the search on the first few pages?

If you do then there is a good chance potential customers will find you. Don't panic if you didn't, it's not the end of the world but remember there is a fine line between being found for your keywords / phrases and spamming twitter. Yep. There are some people who tweet the same link over and over and instead of gaining followers, they lose them as they are not building a relationship, they are just broadcasting.

Make a point of tweeting once a day a link to your blog, so you are known for what you do and who you are. It can be articles or posts you wrote some time ago, fresh content is good but again it's not the end of the world if you don't have it - you can establish that you have been doing what you doing for a long time and are very experienced. If you have the time you can freshen up those articles and entice your current readers to revisit your older material.

If you don't have your own blog then post your articles here on the Essex Mums forum and then tweet the link. Easy.

Right back to getting the followers you want...
There is a lot of emphasis on 'local' and 'local' is very important. You are more likely to meet a fellow twitterer if they are local. If you meet them and you 'click' you are more likely to get recommended. So that golfer who plays golf behind my house and follows me on twitter has a purpose after all!

Do a local search for twitter users in your local area, make contact with them, follow them and promote local tweetups (yep, they are really called that). Check out the events page if you want to see what's happening in your area in the next few weeks. From local toddler groups, preschool classes, you can bet someone is looking for that information and when they find it, they find you.

Build relationships, retweet something someone interesting has said. Tweet an interesting non work related link, start a conversation. More importantly every now and then ask your followers who they would recommend you connect with who are looking for your services. Connect with their suggestions and start building a relationship there too.

Sounds like hard work? well no one said it was easy but it can pay dividends. Try it for twenty minutes a day for 6 weeks and see what a difference it makes to your business.

And if you are a busy working mum, twitter can allow you to build the relationships you want, in your own time.


by Sarah Arrow
Sarah is a member of Essex Mums and writes the blog 'What's On in Essex'.