Quite a few business owners have told me that their major concern about Twitter is that it is a waste of time. They are afraid that they will spend a lot of time on Twitter without getting results. After all, Twitter looks like a chat program where thousands of people can participate at any one time. This certainly looks like a big waste of time.

The beauty of Twitter, though, is how individual it is. Since none of us follow exactly the same people, Twitter conversations will look different to each one of us. Follow random people who you have nothing in common with, and all you will hear about are topics that do not interest you.

However, follow people with similar interests, people who can help you with your business, and people in your target market, and you will see your Twitter stream as an opportunity to learn, contribute, help and get clients for your business.

If you are tired of wasting time reading things you are not interested in on Twitter, here are three tips so that you can stop wasting time and get results:

– Evaluate Your Goals For Twitter. When you just joined Twitter, chances are you joined in because (your coach told you to do that, all the cool kids were doing it, etc), so you did not set any goals. You wanted to see how it goes and what it is.

Now, before you do anything else, you must set some realistic goals for using Twitter. If you do not have any goals, you are not going to see any results. It’s that simple.

What are you expecting from Twitter? Clients? Customers? Newsletter subscribers? Set some goals, and then work on achieving them!

– Don’t Borrow Time For Twitter; Only Spend The Time That You Have. Only spend time that you have on Twitter. Only have 20 minutes in one day? Spend the 20 minutes on Twitter and then go on to your other commitments. Don’t make your client work or marketing activities suffer because of Twitter.

Don’t borrow the time that you do not have to use Twitter. Do allocate some of your marketing time for Twitter. Use that time wisely.

– Track Everything! Track everything about using Twitter. Track how much time you spend and what kind of results you receive (such as newsletter subscribers, clients, exposure to your target market, etc). Doing this will show you whether Twitter marketing is working for you or whether you should adjust it further.

If you feel you are spending too much time on Twitter without results, it is time to reevaluate! Get a pen and a sheet of paper and use the three points above to reevaluate your Twitter strategy. To learn about my step-by-step plan for creating buzz and getting clients and customers on Twitter, get my How To Promote Your Business On Twitter Home Study Guide, at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/ztr

Biana Babinsky

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networking Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.