Most people are familiar with Google at this point. It is a very popular search engine. Google’s social platform, Google+, has a tool called Google Circles, which enables the users to categorize people into different groups or lists.

The purpose of Google Circles

The intended purpose of Google Circles is to allow people to share their content with the most appropriate people. It also allows people to follow other people’s content if it is deemed interesting and valuable.

The privacy aspect of Google Circles

Whoever is a member of one of your Google Circles is not able to see any of the other members of the circle. They are not able to tell specifically who is in the circle or how many people are members of the circle. Google Circles mimics real-life relationships. When it comes to a circle of friends (or even a circle of business associates), you are very selective about who you will allow to be a part of your circles. The people whom you choose for your circles are people you respect and admire, close friends, potential business partners, and people with whom you have some sort of emotional connection. The members of the circles have no awareness of the other members of the circles. If they eventually have an awareness, it is usually not detrimental; however, in the beginning, it is up to the person who is forming the circles to have control over who is a part of them.

Circles are circles and groups are groups

There are several differences between circles and groups and it is important to understand that they are not interchangeable. The following are ways to differentiate circles from groups:

In groups:

• All of the members of the group are aware of who the other group members are.
• All of the members of the group understand the objectives of the group.
• All of the members of the group know the name of the group.

In Circles:

• A Google Circle is an exclusive group of people. With Google Circles, there is nothing public about it. You can think about it as an extremely exclusive “country club.” Along with the privacy, unfortunately, the concept is difficult for some people to understand because of its complexity.
   
• Circles can limit who has access to any given content and others who have not been given access to that particular content will see “Limited” at the top of the post.
   
• With Google Circles, you can control who you want to share specific information with, whereas you can’t control it with groups.
   
• With Google Circles, you are able to keep the number of people at a comfortable level for you. If you feel that someone is worth adding to your circle, it will be a decision that you have not made lightly or quickly.

When you first set up your Circles, you can drag people from your lists in Google+ to form your circles. It is as easy as click and drag. The uniqueness of it is in the control that it allows you and the owner of the circles.

Conclusion

Google+ Circles is an excellent organizational tool. To have the capability of not only forming circles of people (for business and personal use) but then being able to control who is allowed to receive your content is amazing. This is a unique feature that will help you and your business to prosper more and more toward your journey of ultimate success.

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You use Twitter constantly for your business but you may not be aware that Twitter has some limitations that may affect your use. A lot of the limitations may not be any big deal but they are important to know.

A limited number of followers

Once your Twitter account is following 2,000 other Twitter users, if you try to follow additional people, you will be limited by ratios that are specific to your account.  If you have that many followers (which many people do not), you will get a message from Twitter once you have reached that limit. Two thousand people is a high number for “regular folks.” You will receive notification that you have reached that limit and you will have to wait until you are given permission to go over that limit before you can follow any additional people. If you are connected to someone on Twitter and they are at their 2,000 follower limit, please don’t take it personally and unfollow them. They don’t really have any control over the situation. If you reach your Twitter limit and have other people with whom you wish to be connected, you need to look at your others and consider if you can do without following them. If you feel that you can, you can substitute the new followers for the ones that you already had.

Your following percentage is higher

Twitter allows you a slightly higher percentage of people whom you are allowed to follow than who are allowed to follow you. According to Twitter, the limit is not a set number. It is different for every person and it is based on the ratio of followers to following. Once you have hit the limit, an error message will appear in your browser. Once you have more followers, you will be able to follow additional people as well.

Daily following ability

You are only allowed to follow 1,000 people a day (this is pretty generous). You should be careful not to send tweets too frequently to the same followers, however, because you will hit the limit, which may lock your Twitter account for up to 24 hours. It is a good idea to follow people during less-popular hours (perhaps during non-business hours) in order to avoid your limit. You wouldn’t want your limit to prevent you from tweeting some really important content.

Daily tweet limit

Your daily tweet limit is 1,000. Of course, that is pretty generous. Depending on how actively you tweet, you will most likely not get close to the limit of 1,000 tweets a day.

Hourly tweets

If you divide 1,000 tweets in a 24-hour period by 24, you can do 41 tweets in an hour. What is the chance that  you will exceed that in any given hour during business (or even during your personal time)? You also have a limit of 250 direct messages a day. If you compare direct messages to Emails, would you really send that many Emails in one day?

Conclusions

Twitter is an excellent social media tool for business. It is important to be aware of what it can do for you and what it can’t do. It works most effectively one on one and is a tool that is tailor made for customization. Twitter is constantly striving to meet the needs of its users and feedback is taken very seriously and the suggestions that are communicated are implemented to a great extent. The tweets always cater to the individual. The chances are great that you will not go anywhere near the limits that have been discussed here. However, it is very important to be aware of the rules that Twitter has established so that you can use it in the most effective way for your business.

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When you use the correct social media tools to benefit your small business, the results will be surprisingly successful. You have to have the proper mindset and a willingness to work very hard and to establish an unrelenting consistency.

With that in mind, it is very important that you understand clearly what return on investment (ROI) you are hoping for. Undoubtedly, considering that, your (and all other business owners) ultimate goal is to sell your offerings. Of course, there are several things that have to happen along the way before you get to that point. However, at some point, you will need to convert your prospective customers into paying clients.

Hit the ground running

You should get involved and start engaging with social media right away. Waiting is not a good idea. The sooner you get involved, the sooner your online connections will notice you and will start to engage with you. As your business grows, you social media activities will grow as well.

Keep your eye on the communications

It is critical that you monitor the communication that comes in and goes out. If your volume of communications starts to diminish rapidly, you may have to adjust exactly how you are communicating.

Play around with various social media channels

Some of the more popular social media channels (such as Twitter and Facebook) are incredible communication tools. As such, it is important to use them in a way that highlights their strength as tools. You should use them to communicate one on one with clients, prospective clients, other writers, etc. The more popular those social media channels become, the more diluted your communications may become (because the number of people who are reading your content will be much greater).

Encourage your online connections to eventually buy

It is widely understood that the heart of successful social media interactions is the relationship itself. Once you have established a solid relationship with someone, a relationship that you feel you can trust to endure over time, there is nothing wrong with broaching the subject of selling. It is acceptable at this point to communicate about what you want through Twitter and Facebook. At that point in time, you may want to ask them to download an Ebook that you have offered, sign up for a free trial of your services, or ask you for a proposal. Make sure to include your call-to-action as often as possible and most importantly, remember to constantly provide other people with valuable, educational, and informative content.

Quality over quantity

In order to use social media effectively, you need to be consistent and regular in your efforts with other people. Once you have established a solid relationship with others, you need to work on maintaining those relationships. If you have thousands of online connections and you don’t really know anything about the majority of them besides their names, what value do they actually hold for you? If you want to successfully convert  your prospective customers into actual customers, you have to put their needs and wants above your own. The concept of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) must always be at the forefront of your mind. If you don’t use that approach, your prospects will not have a true motivation for engaging with you.

Engage away

The engagement with your online connections is critical to the success of your business. The more you interact with people, the more you will get to know them and the more they will get to know you. The stronger that bond becomes, the more they will trust you, find you credible, and want to do business with you. Social media interactions don’t lead directly to sales; however, if you follow the logical steps of engagement, eventually, you will be successful at selling your products and/or services. You get noticed and eventually, you convert them. The more valuable content you are able to share with them, the more they will want to engage with you. After all, your content is offering them a solution to their problems.

Your immediate reason for being involved with social media

When you first start to become active with social media channels, you should not get involved thinking that you are there to acquire customers. You are there merely to establish new relationships. The person on the other end of the computer is just that. He or she is a real, living, breathing person. Your number one concern in that relationship is to figure out how you can help the other person (in a sincere and genuine way). Once you have established a real relationship, the rest will follow.

Give them what they need

You must always think in terms of giving the other person what he or she needs. One of the biggest challenges is establishing the relationships in the first place. Once you have accomplished that, the hard work is over. Once you have loyal online connections who want to continue to interact with you, you merely need to figure out exactly what you can do for them. If, after all is said and done, your connections don’t buy anything from you, the relationship is not what you thought it was.

Make them aware of what they are missing

If you are able to show your connections what they are missing by not engaging with you, they won’t want to miss out on it. You need to get to know them as deeply as possible and you need to allow them to really get to know you. Before you know it, they will be anxious to engage with you as much as possible. Make them understand why they can’t live without what you are sharing with them.

 Establish yourself at the forefront of their minds

The more focused your messages to your online connections, the more they will think about you. If you share all sorts of valuable content with them in several different forms, they will think about you and your business very often. Your goal is to get them to come across something that you are not offering them and have it remind them of you and what you are sharing. It is almost subliminal.

Conclusion

All businesses should be involved with social media; however, the engagement that small businesses have with social media is different than other businesses. Small businesses tend to do engage with their clients on a more personal level. If you follow the advice that was given here, you will enjoy a great deal of success with your prospective and current clients and everyone will be happy.

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Anyone who is in business knows that it isn’t always easy to convert social media fans and followers into actual clients. Sometimes, it is a lot less difficult to acquire fans and followers than to turn them into clients.

The degree of difficulty

It seems as though the degree of difficulty is not the same with every industry or niche. Depending on which products and/or services you are selling will determine how difficult it is to convert your people into paying customers. If you are offering a product or service that people feel they need (it is a necessity, not a luxury), you will have an easier time of converting them and of selling more. If, on the other hand, your offerings are deemed less of a necessity by the people doing the buying, you will have a more difficult time of selling. In each case, you should develop (or have developed for you) a strong and effective web presence. You need to give your fans and followers a chance to get to know them and for them to get to know you. Only after you have successfully built a relationship together with a solid foundation will you be successful at turning them into clients.

There are many people who have developed relationships and have gained customers solely through their online connections. It is critical that you share valuable content,  have meaningful online connections, are sincere in your efforts to help other people. Once they see that your goal is to help them and not to help yourself, the relationship will flourish because they will begin to trust you and to have confidence in  your credibility. People (in general) love to be offered content that allows them to learn new information on a regular basis. The more value that you are able to give other people, the more they will appreciate who you are and what you have to offer. As some point in the relationship, your fans and followers will pursue a conversation with you that involves buying something from you.

Compel them to return to you over and over again

If you can get people to keep coming back to you, they will eventually become loyal customers. Loyal fans and followers = loyal customers. You should bear in mind that it will most likely take people more than one or two interactions before they decide to buy something from you. It will probably take them seven, eight, or even more interactions. You need to be patient and allow them to do it in their own time. The most effective way to make them feel comfortable is to continue to draw them into your discussions and make them feel that they are an important part of the conversation. You need to make them feel that their opinions matter to you. It has been proven,over and over again, that many positive things come out of social networking and online social interactions. It is very important that you use the right tools effectively. If you do, you will experience a great deal of success for your business.

Persistence and consistency

One of the two most important ingredients when it comes to converting fans and followers into clients are persistence and consistency. You need to interact often, make sure that you post content a consistent number of times (and on specific days), and continue to communicate with other people as often as they communicate with you. It is extremely important to make sure that your fans and followers understand how much value you hold and how important your contributions are to them professionally. Once you have established relationships with people with whom your connection started online, there will be a time when you should get to know them face to face. Both types of interactions are extremely important and both are necessary for a successful relationship overall.

The quality of your content

I am sure that you have heard the expression “Content Is King.” That is absolutely correct. Without your content, you have nothing. Because of the fact that the success of social media is based on successful relationships, your content must really be of the highest quality possible. You are relating to people through your content and what you write will make them decide whether they want to continue to build a relationship with you. It has to be as perfect as possible.

Conclusion

Turning fans and followers into loyal clients seems like a daunting task as a whole. However, when you approach it methodically and deal with one step at a time, you can succeed at building relationships with people, getting them to trust you and to believe in your credibility and trustworthiness, and to truly want to do business with you and to be loyal clients for many years to come. If you put the right list of ingredients together in order to become truly successful, you will see that your efforts will pay off and will keep paying off. Make sure that whatever you offer to other people, they are benefitting in some way. You want to try to make sure that when they need what you are offering, you are the first one to come to mind.

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The first thing that you have to establish when it comes to Twitter is what it is actually doing for your business. If you don’t thoroughly understand how Twitter works, you may not be able to leverage it properly.

If you think that Twitter is an ineffective social media channel that most people no longer use and that can’t do very much for your business, you need to rethink. Twitter is a very powerful tool that has tremendous potential when it comes to business. Of course, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that you understand how to use Twitter in a way that benefits your business the most. Once you have that down pat, you need to think about the focus of your content and make sure that it is written in a compelling, exciting, and informative way. The following are some ways in which you can focus your content so that it has the maximum impact on your readers.

Use humor

If you use humor in your Twitter content, people will not only want to engage with you but they will also retweet what you have shared with them. The more interested other people are in your content, the more inclined they will be to get involved with you and interact as much as possible. Before you know it, you will be considered a subject matter expert in your niche or industry.

Share the benefit of your experience, viewpoint, and opinions

The reason that you are sharing your content on Twitter in the first place (and the reason that you have become a subject matter expert) is that you have knowledge and expertise that will benefit other people. Of course, your content should always be relevant to your followers and to what is going on in your industry or niche.

Pose thought-provoking questions

The main reason that you want to ask questions online is so that people will respond to you. The more you engage with other people and the more in-depth the discussion becomes, the stronger your relationship with those with whom you engage will become. Every time you pose a question, you will have another opportunity to generate a whole bunch of new content.

Tweet on a consistent and regular basis

Every time you have something interesting and valuable to communicate, you should take advantage of the opportunity. You should be careful to tweet content that has some value and because each of your tweets will be short (a maximum of 140 characters), there is nothing wrong with tweeting frequently throughout the day (5-7 times a day is acceptable).

Recognize trends

If you recognize a trend that you can leverage for your brand, you should include it in your tweets. Remember that you should only mention trends that are appropriate and have a synergy with your niche, your followers, and your business goals and objectives.

Leave a trail of bread crumbs

It is very important for you to allow your followers to be able to connect with you easily. A great way to do that is to put back links into your tweets. Your links should lead your followers to blog articles, comments, etc. Your followers will then reach out to you and interact and engage and your online communications will acquire a momentum that will be very effective.

Respond to people who reach out to you

Basic manners go a long way. If someone interacts with you, respond to them. It may be a good idea to find out what motivated them to reach out to you in the first place so that you can figure out how you can help them to solve their issues. Of course, always be polite and thank them for taking the time and having the interest to reach out to you.

Keep on retweeting

Retweeting is an excellent idea when it comes to building online relationships. Make sure that you always include the person’s Twitter handle whose content you are retweeting. The point is that you want to share valuable content from other people with people you know and you want them to do the same in return with your content.

Conclusion

As time goes on, Twitter is becoming a stronger and stronger tool. It is critical that you take advantage of it in the most effective way possible. The more  you engage with other people online, the stronger your relationships will be. Your immediate goal is always to help your followers in some way. In turn, they will most likely be helping you in some way. Twitter is successful only if the relationships are successful that are the driving force behind the communications. If you use Twitter correctly, you will strengthen your business relationships and you will achieve greater success.

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LinkedIn now has more than 100 million professionals worldwide, potential clients for small businesses. If you have a LinkedIn profile, follow these steps to take advantage of recent changes to LinkedIn and create your Company Page today.

Add your company page. In LinkedIn, choose Com­panies on the navigation bar. On the right are links to Add a Company and FAQ. Click on FAQ for com­prehensive information, and go to Company Page Overview for the requirements to add a Company Page. There are only four, but one is that you must have a company email address (e.g. john@companyname.com). Once you meet all the requirements, select Add a Company, fill in the contact information and verify that you are an official representative.

Add basic information. Add com­pany description, industry, website URL, Twitter ID, location, and more. Once your page is established you can click on Admin tools in the upper right, select Edit, make your changes and Publish. Your profile must be associated with the correct company in or­der to edit the page. You can also assign administra­tor rights to employees for later updates.

Add your key services. Select Services. Under Ad­min tools on the right, select Edit. Add a more de­tailed description of your services with banners and URLs to highlight current promotions. Target audi­ences with multiple variations of your service page. Add products or services by choosing Add a prod­uct or service under Admin tools, and provide information and pho­tos. You can assign specific em­ployee contacts for each service, add a promotion with a link to a specific URL, and even add a You­Tube video.

Ask clients and associates to rec­ommend and follow you. Once you have taken those first few steps to get your page in order, don’t forget to solicit recommendations for your work, which can be done directly within the services you have promoted. Also, don’t forget to ask associates and clients to follow you.

Full steam ahead with promo­tions. You can create paid ads for your company or for specific ser­vices and promotions. Just look for promote my products & services or promote my product under Ad­min tools on your Service page or product or service page. Ad varia­tions can test which image and text performs best. Be brief, creative, and honest. You can target your ads to specific audiences, one of many campaign options available to maximize your ad. There are help links to answer questions and guide you through the process.

NEW on LinkedIn: Status Pages. The most exciting new rollout is status pages for companies. Now, you can create status updates that showcase your company and help to drive your connections and their contacts to your company page! Once you create a status update for your company you and your em­ployees can share it with personal connections. You can also send the update to individuals or post to your groups (if they allow such promotions). There’s a comment space and like link to engage your followers and others too, so make the most of each status update!

Conclusion

LinkedIn is an amazing tool for business and LinkedIn company pages enables you, as the business owner, to strengthen your relationships with other people. LinkedIn is constantly coming up with improvements (tools, applications, etc) that make your LinkedIn experience even more profitable and beneficial.

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When it comes to online interactions, just like any other interactions, your personality is a strong influence on your ability to be successful. Your personality, with all of its traits, is a huge influence on how others respond to you.

Connecting people

When it comes to business networking and introductions being made, some people will be more likely than others to effectively help other people to widen their circle of business connections. Your personality will determine whether you will be comfortable with introducing people to other people. If you are a reserved individual, chances are very good that you won’t have a desire to put yourself in the spotlight. By introducing one person in your online social circle to another person in your online social circle, you are making yourself the center of attention. That may not be something about which you are comfortable.

On the other hand, if you are an outgoing person, a person who lacks inhibitions, you will be much more inclined to connect people in your online communities with each other. In fact, connecting people can bring you a great deal of joy. Your deepest influence comes from who you are as a person, deep down inside. Your genes could be a much larger factor in your life than you know.

Social media: It satisfies many different types of people

Social media is extremely attractive to people with all sorts of different personalities for many different reasons. It gives outgoing people a much larger group of people to work with when it comes to successfully being the person who establishes connections for others. It makes them so happy to be in the middle of everything and, at the same time, to positively affect a change for others. The various online communities offer different benefits for different people.

Social media is also very attractive to people who are not as comfortable with being in the middle of everything. Social media gives them the opportunity to connect with people as much or as little as they wish to do so. They can go at a pace that is comfortable for them and, at the same time, they can still feel satisfied that they are making a solid contribution to other people.

One thing that is clear in all cases is that no matter how people use social media and social networking,  who they are as people is an important part of it. It is scientifically understood that different genes affect different types of behavior. One thing that is certain is that people will continue to connect with each other and interact through online social communities. That means of communication is here to stay. Having a deep understanding of the psychology and the science behind it makes everything better.

Social media’s potential influence

There are so many different ways in which social media can influence people with their issues. Many of those issues can have genetics at their source. Let’s look at obesity as an example. In many cases, obesity is very influenced by heredity. From a psychological perspective, many people who battle a weight problem are able to overcome their issue with support from other people. That is where the social media aspect comes into play. If a person has a strong sense of online social community and shares relationships with other people who can empathize (or at least sympathize) with them, their end result will be affected in a positive way and they will feel better about themselves.

Conclusion

Whether genetics are being considered when it comes to personality traits or issues that are physical as well as psychological, social media comes into play and can have a positive influence on the outcome of the situation. It is very important to have an understanding of how strong a role heredity plays when it comes to people successfully making social media work for them. People will respond to you if you allow them to see who you really are and to forge common ground with them. At the same time, if you feel that your personality needs a little spicing up, there is nothing wrong with keeping things interesting by speaking about provocative subjects or, perhaps, by injecting some humor into your interactions with others.

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There is a whole lot of online garbage that comes to you via the Internet. When you get garbage, your first inclination is to press the “delete” button ASAP. On the other side, you want your content to be valued.

You want your content to be read, cherished, and shared with others by others and by others. The issue is that people are in a position where they have to sift through a great deal of useless information in order to get to valuable and educational content, such as the content that you are sharing with them. They have to brush away all of the dirt before they get to the actual gem that is your content. Earning the undivided attention of other people is definitely no easy task. You really need to change your approach to getting attention. The old methods just don’t seem to be working as effectively as they used to work.

Earning attention from the right people

As is always the case, you will want to earn attention from the people with whom you can share a mutually beneficial relationship. When you change the dynamic and you earn the attention of others rather than demanding their attention, it completely changes the impression that other people get of you as well as improving the results that come from that new approach. The very first thing that you need to determine is connected to the marketing principle that is commonly uttered by many people nowadays and one that has truly been instrumental in building solid business relationships: WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, your goal is to make sure that you are able to help the other person solve their problems. If each side has their needs satisfied, everyone will be happy.

There are several different ways in which you can earn attention from the content that you share.

Inspiration: If you can succeed at touching people emotionally, you will succeed at establishing a relationship with them, which will hopefully flourish for a very long time. At the heart of social media is the relationship. With that in mind, it is not surprising that emotional connections envelope relationships and they are the fuel that makes the relationships work. All human beings want the same thing. They want to feel good and they want that feeling to last indefinitely.  A great way to capture the emotional element in writing is through testimonials from other people. Testimonials are generally charged by emotion. It is rare that you will read a testimonial that is so flat and dry that you don’t feel anything when you read it.

Education: Another great way to earn attention from other people is by educating them. When gearing your content in the educational direction, the elements of information that you may want to include are what to do and not do, when and when not to do it, why and why not to do it, and how to do it. Most people love to learn new things whenever possible. The more they learn, the smarter they feel. After all, who wouldn’t want to feel smart? Again, it is that emotional connection that causes people to respond. Feeling smart makes them feel good about themselves. It is a feeling that they hope will continue for a very long time.

Participation: In order to earn valuable attention, you must interact with others on a consistent and regular basis. People who don’t interact with others won’t get anywhere. Your success in business is all about  your success with your relationships.

Entertainment: People love to be entertained as much as possible. If your content is dry and boring, people won’t pay attention to it and people won’t remember it afterward. If you make it interesting and touching in some way, its impact will go on for a very long time. You can certainly present content that is entertaining in a clever and effective way as opposed to being silly or fluffy.

Controversy: Controversy does not necessarily have to be a bad thing. One thing that is undeniable is that controversy earns lots of attention. Of course, when it comes to controversy, you need to exercise a great deal of discretion. Of course, you must gear your controversial contact to the people whose attention you are interested in earning. The topics must fit the needs of your audience.

Conclusion

If the content that you are sharing with others fits into one or more of the categories mentioned above, you are in good shape. The more categories that apply, the better. Attention is a very valuable and rare commodity and at times it can be difficult because you don’t control the amount of attention you earn, others do. Earning valuable attention from business associates who matter to you and your business and with whom you share a valuable connection will take you very far and you will find that this new approach will work extremely well.

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There are many really great reasons for you to be active on Twitter. By now, you realize that Twitter is a wonderful business tool that will help you to become even more successful in your business. Let’s discuss the advantages.

You may have found that Twitter uses up a great deal of your time (and it certainly can be addictive) or that you are not using it efficiently. However, it used sensibly and efficiently, you will start to see the benefits for your business pretty quickly. There are many really good reasons to become active on Twitter.

Your connections

Since you are using Twitter for business, your connectivity is of vital importance. For example, what if you have a desire to connect with a person of influence in your niche or industry? If you are on Twitter (since so many other people are on Twitter), it is an easy way to establish a connection with the person or people with whom you want to connect. Without this avenue, it would be a lot more difficult to connect (or to establish a connection). Remember that the more you interact with other people, the stronger your credibility will become. As people get to know you and come to regard you as a subject matter expert, your Twitter connection will become even more important.

You will be in the know

Twitter is being used by millions of people around the world. People (universally) share content on Twitter in every possible industry that you could imagine. They discuss business-related events, business articles of interest, industry events, trends, etc. Twitter is an excellent resource for business articles and if you allow the exposure, you will learn a tremendous amount.

You will be up on current events

Twitter is a wonderful source for what is happening now, by the minute. If you own a business, you must know what is going on at all times in your niche or industry. If you are interested in testing it, go to search.twitter.com and type in keywords. You will get information that you may not find anywhere else.

You will be connected socially

If you really want Twitter to work for you effectively, you should not let fear get in your way when it comes to communicating freely. Being active on Twitter puts you in a position where you have to be social. You are forced into a position of engagement and you know that you should be engaging on an extremely regular basis. If you are really working Twitter properly,  you can’t just ignore it. You must use it regularly and you must use it often. If you are a person who is not generally comfortable with relationships, Twitter is an excellent place to start. You will establish a level of comfort simply because you will be engaging with others on a regular basis. It is sort of like being terrified of public speaking and then being forced to deliver your 30-second elevator pitch over and over again at networking events. Before you know it, you will be totally at ease and you won’t even have realized that you have stepped out of your comfort zone.

You will stay in touch with others

A great way to get a strong sense of what others think about your brand and business offerings is through Twitter. Not only can you read what others have to say about your business but you will also be able to interact with them through Twitter. The exchanges that you will be reading will help you to understand what your customers want and then you will be in a far better position to give it to them. The better you serve them, the more inclined they will be to buy from you eventually.

You will experience inspiration

If you pay attention to what other people in your niche or industry are saying and doing, you may very well be inspired to do the same (or something that is very close to what they are doing). If it works, why not use it? The more you interact with other people, they more inspired you will be by them. At the same time, you have the power to inspire them. It works both ways.

Your curiosity will be satisfied

The more information that you have at your fingertips, the more thirst you will have for knowledge and understanding. The more you learn, the more  you will want to learn. You will read all sorts of wonderful things from other people, such as their accomplishments, interesting experiences, etc, and you will want to have similar experiences that you can share with them.

Conclusion

Twitter is an incredible tool and new and exciting angles are being made available to general public all of the time. It draws you in and makes you want to interact and to learn from other people. Although millions of people use Twitter, you need to make your own mark and use it so that it is a reflection of your particular individuality. The more you use it, the more you will want to use it. It has the potential to really strengthen your business and bring you to the next level in all respects.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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Since 2008, when the US economy seemed to hit rock bottom, many people were forced to consider new ways of earning a living. Many opened their own businesses and introduced themselves to other business owners.

One essential part of being an entrepreneur is networking with other professionals. One part of networking that you can count on is the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is when you speak for a short time (30 seconds is common) to the other networkers to tell them what you do and what you need. The reason that it is called an elevator pitch is that it should take approximately as long as an elevator ride takes. The purpose for your networking is to establish connections with other people so that you can hopefully help each other professionally. The elevator pitch is a tease. In other words, you are enticing the other people just enough for them to be interested and to want to learn more about you and your business. The elevator pitch (or some form of it) must also be a part of your entire online presence. It should be included in every social media profile that you have online and on your website homepage. On your website, the concept must be there even if the wording is not identical to the verbal elevator pitch that you share with others when you are networking in person.

Changes over time

Elevator pitches are interesting. The elevator pitch that you use when you first start networking is most likely not the elevator pitch that you use subsequently. It changes all of the time. As you start to develop your business and experience new things and new people, your wants and needs will change as well. Your elevator pitch will be adjusted to fit the rest of it. Bear in mind that when you are giving your elevator pitch, people aren’t interested in the minutest details. They are interested in the bottom line and they want to know immediately how you and your business can help them to solve their problems. There are several elements that go into an effective and successful elevator pitch.

• Humor
• Entertainment
• Very little or no technical details
• Your elevator pitch assumes that your audience has an extremely short attention span
• Your elevator pitch will help you to gain clarity
• It puts you in a position of understanding the position of the person to whom you are presenting your pitch

If you incorporate those elements into your elevator pitch, you will capture the audience’s attention and you will succeed at keeping their attention. In addition to those elements that have already been mentioned, there is some additional information that you may find useful and effective in your elevator pitch.

• An explanation why you are doing what you are doing (professionally)
• Your elevator pitch captivates your audience
• Your elevator makes you seem credible

Getting people interested in what you are doing

Your absolute first goal is to get people to be interested in what you are doing and what you are offering. If you can get them interested with that initial 30-second pitch, you can go into more detail at a later date. In fact, it is at the time when you share more details about your business that you will be able to distinguish yourself as a subject matter expert and the person who other people will go to when they have an issue or question that needs to be resolved. Elevator pitches may seem very easy but there is more to them than you might think. It is important to be well prepared before you walk into the room and you will be surprised at how much polishing is necessary before you actually get to the point of standing up and delivering your pitch.

Conclusion

Elevator pitches (whether you like them or not) are an extremely important part of your business. It is so important for you to be able to articulate what you do and how you can help other people through your offerings. Remember that your elevator pitch has nothing to do with actually selling anything directly. You will want to say something in your elevator pitch that stands out and that makes the members of your audience associate you with something that you said in those 30 seconds.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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