Twitter Useful for More than Following Celebs? Maybe for SMB's to Promote Other Media

As many did, I jumped on Twitter early, and learned the details, downloaded the tools with the funny names, and tried to connect.  Then I tried to connect some more.  Nobody wrote back.  I'm a social guy.  I like having a conversation.  But it seemed like a pretty lousy way to make a friend.

So I read experts and followed their advice.  I now have about 1130 some followers, and I get about 300 Tweets and hour.  90% of them are somebody selling something or quoting some dead person, or making other statements that seem to be mechanical and self absorbed. 

Tell me in the comments if you find your experience to be different and why you think I'm not finding any real conversations.

Now I realize that I can reduce my tweet flow by a lot.  I can unfollow folks that aren't really making my day, or I can filter them out.  The truth is that I just haven't found anything to filter in!

Now that doesn't mean the whole Twitter thing is totally useless for a small business owner.  Some folks actually do follow some of their feed.  Things like stars, fads, brands, hobbies, scores, events, news, and such have a base of people paying attention.

And, I didn't want to go of half-cocked here today.  so I spent several hours on my own Twitter account, read some expert opinion and recommendations for optimizing a business opportunity, and learned very little new. 

My conclusion?  Almost like Linked In, but in this case I would say better for brick and mortar retail, and not so much for services.  Better for businesses that have fan bases, lots of sales or events, or where there is a critical news flow. 

But you can fairly easily add followers, and once you add them, you can sent out Tweets quickly and easily.  A good use for these Tweets would be to announce new blog posts, new videos, new articles, new products.  So, for instance, a retailer gets a new product in.  Do a two minute video, put it up on your blog, and your Facebook.  Now tweet about the product, the video, and the blog post.  Using what I suggested yesterday on Linked in, you can do the same thing there.  And, spoiler alert, you can do the same thing on Google+ and Pinterest.  Now with about 15 minutes worth of promotion, you might generate a significant increase in views of your video or blog post.

Repeat this process and watch all your numbers rise.  Capture some of those folks as likes, some into your circles, and some dropping emails, and you can now reach out to them in a more casual environment.  But it does take a decision to spend that kind of effort for months. not days. 

Please help others with your thoughts if you agree or don't.