by The Ibis Network

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Social media is a great tool for eavesdroppers, voyeurs, and busybodies. Which means, the best way for you to find new business using social media is to make sure you’re being overheard by the right set of eavesdroppers. Talk loudly and make sure you’re saying something that will garner some attention. Then, once you’ve gotten their attention, be interesting, available, friendly, and polite.

Here are some tips to help you make better use of your Twitter page …

Be Thankful: Using Twitter properly – or any other social-media site for that matter – requires a bit of old-fashioned etiquette. Much like they do in everyday life, people online appreciate a simple thank you from time to time. For our purposes that means turning on email notifications from your Twitter page. Twitter will send you an email any time someone new follows you. Be sure to send a thank you. It’s a good way to encourage communication and requires nothing more than a short message.

Just Tweet Already: Okay, if you’re just starting out on Twitter, you’ll have to have some tweets on your page. You aren’t likely to attract anything but spam with any empty page. If you’re having trouble, re-tweet something you’ve found interesting or informative on someone else’s Twitter feed that relates to your industry or area. You can’t expect to gain any followers unless you’ve got something to share. Starting from scratch can be difficult but keep it professional and relevant and update it regularly for best results.

Make A List: Use Twitter’s list function to categorize and organize your contacts. Twitter allows you to create 20 lists of up to 500 members each. Create lists of industry contacts and leaders, regional pages, past clients, and anyone else that you’d like to keep up with. Breaking up your contacts into separate lists makes it easier to follow their feeds and look for ways to further engage and communicate.

Don’t Be Selfish: You will, of course, have to come up with some tweets of your own but you also shouldn’t feel embarrassed to pass along relevant and quality content to your followers. Promoting content you find elsewhere on the web is mutually beneficial. It gives you something to tweet and it passes along something of interest to your followers. Twitter is, in the end, just another way of keeping in touch with your business contacts. Gaining a reputation for sharing quality info means more activity on your Twitter page. And that means more potential business.

The Ibis Network / www.theibisnetwork.com