HOW TO: Tweet Your Way to New Clients

Back in 2009, I created a Twitter account. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I wanted to learn more about the events industry. I spent some time tweeting away and before I knew it, I had client inquiries. I didn’t even have a business back then so I would refer them to other people I knew until I had Liz King Events set up. Since then, I would say I get 80%+ of our business from Twitter or a connection made on the social network. But how have we been so successful in this area? I think there are a few things I’ve learned that you can implement to make you more successful too.

SHARE RELEVANCE
When you tweet, you’ve got to have a focus. For me, it was events. That doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about anything else, but too many people have split personality disorder on their Twitter accounts. One minute they’re tweeting about Rihanna’s latest outfit, then their favorite coffee shop and there must be an industry article in their somewhere. If there was ever a “rule” about Twitter that I think fits pretty well, it’s the 80/20 rule. Post industry-specific information 80% of the time and all the personal stuff should take up the other 20%. It’s great to be relevant to people in ways other than industry articles, but your tweets fly through your follower’s timelines quickly and they only get a quick glance before determining your brand. Making sure that you are highly relevant will help establish your brand that much faster.

SHARE RELATABLY
Okay so relatably isn’t a word, but it fit what I was trying to do in this article so we’ll call that today’s dose of poetic freedom. 🙂 Anyways, what I want you to pick up from this point is that it’s really important that you are relatable. Even if 80% of your tweets are industry related, you should make sure they share your voice and perspective. Don’t just share 8 links for every 2 instagram pictures. Make sure that people find a PERSON behind the tweets. If you’re sarcastic, be sarcastic. If you’re goofy, that’s okay too. People connect with other PEOPLE – they need to know who you are so there is an emotional tie between you. This also means you should be meeting the people in your network. Get to know them, ask them questions and maintain friendships in the industry.

SHARE RELIABLY
With massive amounts of information available, this is really critical. You have to make sure that people can count on you as a reliable source. Are you honest? Is the information you share accurate? Do you have control over your own account? Even if you have people tweet for you (though I always recommend you are the primary voice on your Twitter account), make sure that there are filters for accuracy. Your credibility is lost much faster than it’s gained so you’ve got to do whatever you can to make sure people can count on you.

SHARE REGULARLY
Here is where many people fail, and I struggle with this too. You’ve got to be consistent. Posting a tweet once a day simply isn’t enough. I’ve heard the statistic that you should post 22 times a day on Twitter ideally. While you can probably get away with less content, you do need to share throughout the day and post often. You don’t want to flood your follower’s feeds, but you do need to be visible.