Twitter for Business: How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Influence

Do you use Twitter for your business?

Are you wondering how to use Twitter to grow your online influence?

To learn how to best use Twitter for your business, I interview Joel Comm for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Joel Comm, author of numerous books including Twitter Power 2.0 and So, What Do You Do? He's also the host of The Joel Comm Show, a business podcast.

Joel shares how he uses Twitter to grow his platform.

You'll learn how to grow a quality Twitter following, and which types of content work best.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Twitter for Business
So, "What do you do?"

Joel explains how he asks questions and helps people discover what their core is.

This can include passions, talents, skills, abilities and personality, which are used to bring value to the world around them. This is how you find ultimate fulfillment.

Listen to the show to find out the importance of starting a conversation.

Why marketers should pay close attention to Twitter

Joel explains how Twitter is still relevant. They have 200 million active users every day, which is really impressive when up against Facebook's 1 billion–plus accounts.

The thing that made Twitter cool in the first place is its simplicity. It remains relevant because it's where people gather. Joel calls it the virtual water cooler.

Twitter is a place for short conversations, which can be extremely powerful and relevant.

Joel says that the water cooler strategy is to engage. You'll find out the two different ways that Joel engages on Twitter and why significance is so important.

The most essential part is to be authentic. You can connect in the moment, which can be greater than you might imagine.

Joel describes how pictures are an excellent use of Twitter. He likes to tweet from Instagram and can post from his Instagram account to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare, all at the same time.

Twitter only allows 140 characters, so when you use pictures, it can be a lot of bonus words. Even mundane pictures can get a lot of interaction.

Listen to the show to hear an example of a picture that Joel used that made him realize there's a lot of power in mundane tweets.

How Joel uses Twitter today to grow his platform

Joel has started to check out more of what people on his stream have to say and then reshares their content. He does this more than tweeting his own original content. It's the giver mentality.

A couple of Twitter's strengths are the retweet and the favorite. They're great opportunities to focus on the value that others bring.

There are days when Joel doesn't tweet at all. Other days, he can get 5 or 6 tweets in. It all depends on what's happening that particular day. You should never just tweet for the sake of tweeting.

When it comes to a tweeting strategy, you'll discover why it's important to be true to yourself and be aware of the types of businesses Twitter works best for.

Listen to the show to find out why Joel generally uses the standard retweet over a customized retweet.

How to grow a quality Twitter following

Joel advises starting with absolutely nothing. If you are new on Twitter and don't know where to begin, Joel recommends you start with a hashtag that is in an area of interest. The next step is to discover people who are talking about your personal or business interests. As entrepreneurs, there is typically an overlap of the two.

Once you start to follow people,