Think of joining Twitter as going to a very large cocktail party by yourself. When you first walk into the room (ie join twitter) you don't know anyone at all. So you start 'following' and chatting with a few people. Slowly your network grows. You find others who share the same interests as you and chat some more. If people want to find out more about you they can take a look at your twitter profile and read your bio or click through on your web address.
Think of it this way when you include links to your shop.. if you walked into a room and people shouted at you from all sides 'by me' our 'check me out', what would you do?
My success with Twitter has been to consider it a very large chat room. Its all about making the contacts. Once the contacts have been made then people will buy!
If you are just starting out, the following definitions might be of some help:
tweet - the act of posting something on twitter. This is the single most important thing that will affect whether or not twitter is right for you
followers - are people who read your tweets
following - are the people whos tweets you read
@username - a message directed to a specific person that can be seen by everyone
DM - direct message - these are completely private
What do I tweet about?
As was mentioned earlier, think of twitter as a large cocktail party. If you are at a party and the person next to you continued to tell you over and over how and where to buy their products, would you hang around very long? No, I didn't think so. On the other hand, if the only thing they told you was that they got up and had bacon and eggs, then went for a walk you wouldn't hang around much either. The key to twitter is to post things that are interesting to you or that you feel might be interesting to others. Did someone tell you a great joke? Post it! Did you find something really cool on the internet? then post that link.
Conversely, if someone posts something that you found interesting, then tell them! Its all about making contact. You may even want to follow their tweets!
How do you find people to follow? One of the best methods I've found is to use the 'search' function on the right sidebar. Pick a topic you are interested in. If you see someone who sounds interesting, follow them! If someone makes you laugh, send them an @message!
One very useful twitter Resource I've found is Twitter 101 for business.
The power of twitter is there... just harness it to its full potential.
Written by crochetgal.etsy.com
Follow crochetgal on Twitter at http://twitter.com/crochetgal
