Twitter, Social Medias, and Haters

About six weeks ago ago, I was over at Scoble’s blog, reading some of the things Guy said about Twitter in s recent interview. As usual, I was struck by some of the comments made.

A few of the commenters in that and a related post seemed fixated on two areas.

1- I don’t get Twitter/ Using Twitter for Business Is a Mistake,

and

2- Guy’s comments were outrageous.

Here’s what I said. Go read the post for more, but come back because I’m not done yet. Next we’re going to talk about *exactly* how Twitter and Social Media leads to more clients or customers. Once and for all, you’ll see how it’s possible, and more importantly how it’s possible to do without doing anything scummy, nor anything that would make you more uncomfortable than meeting people at a business conference in person.

There’s a hint in the paragraph below.

The comments are outrageous because Twitter isn’t mainstream. Who would have said these things about the phone, the computer, Digg, before the mainstream phase?

And I got 2 clients from Twitter just in this month, December – waiting on a potential third now. Not indirectly, Directly. That’s like saying you can’t drum up business by using the phone. It’s all in *how* you use the phone. If you call everyone you know via the phone up and bang them in the head with your marketing message, they’ll probably hang up and block your number.

But if you use Twitter to build relationships, for the sake of relationships, and not solely to get cash out of someone’s pocket? Odds are you’ll make a lot more money.

As in all social media and communication devices, not being able to get it to work for you is a case of not knowing how to use the tool, not the fact that the tool is broken. I’ve been extremely guilty of this myself, so I’m putting it bluntly to you because that’s what made me see, and what helped my business so much.

Social Media ROI is spectacular if a- you’re not desperate for cash right now (in which case you should start with advertising anyway), and b- you want to build a business, rather than a series of one-time customers.

Is Twitter a place you should go to talk about what your business does, the features of your products, the details of your services? My opinion is No, not unless someone asks you specifically. It should be clear by now, if you’ve read my past posts on Twitter, that I’m not going to tell you there’s only one way to use Twitter, just what I know gets results, and exposure of the techniques I know are full of shit.

If you’re interested in the results I have above, and wonder how I got them even though I only talk business on Twitter about one percent of the time, stay tuned.