“I don’t do Twitter” – Why Business Owners who aren’t on Twitter are Missing Out

That sentence…. is a sentence that I just don’t understand. The challenge has been laid down to the Tweeting Goddess. This is a chance for me to explain why you need to ‘DO’ Twitter.

I’ve converted so many people to Twitter I’ve lost count and it is so satisfying to see these people tweeting away and hearing their stories of what has happened to them and their businesses since they started using it.

People are now using Twitter to search for many things via hashtags. For example, the #Ireland hashtag is a great one for hotels. Tourists are putting up photos and talking about Ireland.
So if you’re running a hotel, and you see people tweeting about your local area, you should follow these people and start a conversation, or even comment on their photo.
Even saying something like ‘What a gorgeous photo’ could start off a conversation. Who knows, maybe they don’t have their accommodation booked for the next night? They might pop into your restaurant or end up staying at your hotel.

I’ve seen many Twitter users ask “where is the best place to eat in …” and depending on how active you are on Twitter, the chances are other people will recommend your hotel or restaurant so you must be ready to respond to that tweet.
If you hop in and say “We’d love to see you, drop in for our afternoon tea or dinner” chances are they will go to see you.

I do a lot of travelling all over Ireland as part of my work. I teach Twitter workshops and also speak at events. One of the things I need to do is stay in hotels. Every time I am staying in a county I don’t know, I put the question to my followers “can anyone recommend a hotel in the area?”.
Every time I ask the question, the hotels who respond to me get the booking.

Not only do I stay at the hotel who responds, I also tweet from there, so that means they get a tweet to over 20k followers! Not bad.

Small business owners are on Twitter. If your target market is SMEs, you need to be building relationships with them right now.
There are so many active hashtags on Twitter such as #IrishBizParty #Belfasthour #Fermanaghhour #Wexfordhour that if you want to earn the trust of small business owners, you need to be taking part and offering them value such as sharing knowledge, giving them special discounts or even giveaways.

This is where people are chatting and building relationships online. These relationships almost always go offline at meetups or #IrishBizParty events that take place regularly. Go to these events. Meet these people so they will get to know you and your company.
I would rather do business with a company I have interacted with on Twitter than with one who isn’t on it at all.

For example. I first connected with Wayne Denner one night on #Belfasthour. I loved what he did and he stood out because of his funky hair (always stand out from the crowd I say!). So I had a nosey at his website etc and thought that he would be a great speaker at the upcoming IrishBizParty conference. As it turned out, he was!!!
That was last year. And since then, Wayne has spoken at many other events and we have bumped into each other at countless conferences here in southern Ireland. I have also been up North to many events and built some really good relationships in the process.

It’s ALL about people. It’s ALL about building relationships too.

I remember one night Nikki Hayes, the DJ, was looking for a dressmaker. I saw the tweet and recommended Miriam from @Sewingconcepts who makes outfits for me sometimes. Apparently she did some work for Nikki as a result!
So why did I recommend Miriam? Well besides the fact that she is so talented and extremely skilled at what she does, I knew her Twitter handle really well from seeing her on Twitter and engaging with her.
So of course she will be the first dressmaker I think of.

I have been asked many times to recommend or find someone who can help with something as I have a lot of followers. So if I don’t know you, or see you are using Twitter, I can’t recommend you.
Oh and by the way, I wouldn’t recommend someone who doesn’t engage with people, or who is always putting out ads or the same old content. So make sure you engage and stand out.

Every single person in this video I met on Twitter first. Then I met them at the conference. This is where magic happens. People who chat a lot with each other on Twitter, meet for the first time and usually it’s with a hug instead of a handshake as it feels like they’ve known each other for so long.

Some people have said to me, “Aww, I didn’t know about the event”……well all the details about it were on Twitter for a long time, but if you “don’t do Twitter”, you will always miss out on these opportunities!

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Samantha is passionate about assisting others to get on and use Twitter and regularly runs Twitter workshops around the country to help people achieve this. The next workshop will be held in Galway and booking details can be found here. 

To find out more about the TweetingGoddess and the various services she offers, visit http://tweetinggoddess.com/ and you can also catch up with Sam in person at the Womens Inspire Network event on June 10 in Wexford.