Twitter and Business: How to Get the Most from Social Media

I just read an article in the DC Women's Business Examiner, promoting a social media seminar where small businesses could learn how to maximise the potential of social media.

The hook for attending the seminar was the need to decide what your business would get out of Twitter.

Are you twittering for customers, brand recognition, or merely just twittering your precious hours away

I say to that, if you are Twittering for any of those things then you are unlikely to get very much out of it.

In fact if you can't use the social media platform, because you enjoy debating, and can make time to read some of the articles posted by other people that catch your attention, then you should just give it a miss altogether. People will spot you if you use it solely to promote your agenda, and bring nothing to the community.

There are too many business users on Twitter as it is, in my opinion. I don't mean people who like myself; are on Twitter to build their online presence and promote their company, but doing so by diving into everything that social media is, and really injecting something into the community. The people for whom promotion of their business is an indirect benefit of their beavering away happily in the world of social media

I mean the business users who ignore you when you message them, who continually send out their message with Tweet after Tweet, and do not even look at any responses. They follow hundreds of people to get followed back and think the volume of their followers is a measure of their success.

It isn't. These people will end up being ignored back, and their business will benefit marginally if at all from its presence in social media.

For me, doing it the right way has brought a lot of additional traffic to my site, feed subscribers, loyal followers, a couple of customers and even a few good friends. What would you rather get from it?