5 Reasons for Speakers to Use Twitter and How to Do It

I’m having blast at the 2009 National Speakers Association conference in Phoenix, and I wanted to do a quick brain dump and created this “5 Reasons for Speakers to Use Twitter” quick guide (along with how I did it).

Why would you want to even start using Twitter? Here are 5 reasons:

1. Help clients find you! By having a Twitter account with your name, you’re letting Google know you exist! Anytime you can get your name on the web, you need to take that opportunity (create GoogleJuice as Jeff Jarvis would say). If you don’t have a Twitter account, go an open one now! You may also want to get a Twitter account in the name of any books you have written, like speaker Keith Ferrazzi (@keithferrazzi) did for his book “Who’s Got your Back” (@whosgotyourback). If you have a common name (like mine), you may need to try for a Twitter account in the name of JaneSmithSpeaks or JaneSmithSpeaker (try and match your websites name, just to keep it consistent).

2. Helps you build your Brand – Here we see the likes of Dell, Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue, and Whole Foods using twitter every day. Fairmont Hotels created quite a buzz when they were offering a twitter contest for a 3 free nights at any of their hotels, anywhere in the world! What can you do to stand out?

3. Education & Networking – Here is a great opportunity to learn and network with fellow speakers and experts in your field. If you are in the social media marketing field like I am, you will find a jackpot of information. There are some great tweeters out there like: @TrendTracker, @GuyKawasaki, @chrisbrogan, @mashable, @TechCrunch and @problogger. You will also find that most conferences have a special tweeter feed (i.e. #NSA09)

4. Twitter is an additional client communication tool. Find and follow all the key players in your target industry (you can use www.Twellow.com to do this). Use Twitter to promote information from you e-newsletter, website, and/or blog. Show value by tweeting information that will help you clients make money (i.e. Read 5 ways to increase your associations revenue here…)

5. Direct Marketing tool. I say use this one with caution, you can send out promotions and offers, but don’t make that the main reason you use Twitter. Make sure you give value first, maybe give an offer after every 5-10 tweets you do. You can also do a series of build up tweets, that end with an offer of a solution (i.e. buy your book, download a free e-book, get this cd, etc..).

How did I get started in Twitter?

1. I opened an account.

2. Used Twitter’s search to find people I know (search.twitter.com).

3. Used Twellow.com to find people to follow in my target niche industry.

4. Decided to open three accounts, one for my speaking and one in my niche (targeted to potential clients), and one for my Foodie alterego.

5. Read Joel Comm’s (@joelcomm) book Twitter Power on better ways to use Twitter, and how to use it to make money! (I see Joel will be speaking at the conference on Tuesday @ 2:15)

6. Quickly discovered I couldn’t keep up with all the tweeting going on started using TweetDeck to manage my incoming tweets.

7. Didn’t want to spend every minute of the day on Twitter and use Hootsuite to schedule my future Tweets and connect my RSS reader on my blog to automatically tweet out when I have a new blog entry. You can read my review of Hootsuite here: http://www.twitip.com/twitip-reader-review-hootsuite/

Summary

Since Twitter operates on PC’s, Mac’s and mobile phones anyone can get or send a tweet whenever they like. This will allow you make an offer or ask a question and get a response very quickly. It is one of the biggest differentiators over any other marketing modalities.

Ok, it looks like Twitter is the perfect tool, what is the downside? First, you have to remember you only have 140 characters to work with, so your message needs to be well thought out and concise. Sure Twitter is free, and most of the applications you’ll need to manage all those tweets and feeds only require donations. Regardless, it takes a large amount of time to go through the information, and send out tweets a few times a day. Luckily there are some tools that help. I like Tweetdeck as a platform to manage all of my tweets, and I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets and automatically take my websites RSS feeds and convert them into tweets. As Tim Ferriss (tferriss) says in the 4 Hour Work Week, “automate whenever you can!”.

As you can see, Twitter can certainly be part of a speaker’s new media marketing strategy. Good Luck!

Jeff Russell