Product Sourcing News   

Twitter for eBiz

By: Colette Marshall
President, WorldwideBrands.com

Have you ever been at a seminar and you saw the main celebrity of the event talking with a group of people and you just wished you could be the fly on the wall, or Have you ever been at an event or supermarket and overheard a very interesting conversation about something important to you and couldn't help but chime into the conversation?

Well Twitter is the virtual answer to that same feeling you get when you're in a crowd of people and want to know what everyone is talking about. It's a "hang out" or "office break" where you can follow the people you want to learn from or you can take part in the conversations that interest you.

Now I can hear the murmurs rumbling, they're saying "Yeh, but Colette that's great for teenagers and celebrities but how does that impact my eBiz and working with wholesale suppliers?"

Well there's several ways and I don't have enough room in this article to go through all of them but here are just a few:

Give your company a human face - Customers like to buy from people they can relate to or trust or get to know (not a corporate robot). So the more you can bring yourself out in front of your customer the more your customers can relate. If your supplier rep is on Twitter, then they might follow you and keep up with what you're twittering. This will help them get to know you better as well.

With our Twitter accounts, we're creating that human face by having fun events that everyone can join in on. The latest one is a fun online duel. Tisha Rogers, Director of Operations (Twitter ID: @TishaRogers) and I (Twitter ID: @ColetteMarshall) are having a Twitter Duel that ends this Saturday, July 4th. Whoever wins gets bragging rights, but whoever has the least followers on July 4 has to sing the National Anthem at our picnic on Saturday. (Yes it will be recorded and posted on our YouTube Channel.)

We've had lots of interactions with our existing members and new members about the event. Everyone gets to know us better. It shows that we're not just a company with a cool product behind a fancy logo. We're caring people too who really want to see our members succeed in ebiz.

Customer Retention/Customer Service -Customers can ask you quick questions directly through a reply or a DM (Direct Message). You can learn alot from this, but I don't recommend using it as your only customer service channel. It is a tool that can help you identify and understand the needs of your customer.

Perfecting your "elevator speech" -Twitter only allows you 140 characters to get your message across and you only have a split second to get the news out. It's a great place to practice that elevator speech when someone asks you about what you do or what you sell. TIP: Be personable and educational - Don't try to be a hard core salesman!

Promoting your content and others -There are so many apps that allow you to connect your content to Twitter which makes it a great channel to release your content. For example, our blog is connected to Twitter each time there is a post the blog post gets twittered to @Worldwidebrands. Others will Retweet (aka "RT") your content when they find it very useful and educational. An example of how you could use this for your biz: Let's say you sell pet products and you just added a new line of dog beds. You could write a blog post or article about how to choose the right dog bed for a specific breed & then let everyone know about it on Twitter. If I'm searching Twitter on search.twitter.com for Great Danes and find your article, I'd continue over to your site to see what kind of dog beds you recommend. I just might even purchase it from you. (If you were following me on Twitter, you'd know I have a Great Dane puppy now.) That's how Twitter can work for you to grow your biz.

Follow me on Twitter for wholesale and internet marketing tips and just come get to know me, I'm at www.Twitter.com/ColetteMarshall.

Tisha gives lots of great tips also including mentions of new wholesale products we add to the database every now and then www.Twitter.com/TishaRogers

For Worldwide Brands news, follow www.twitter.com/WorldwideBrands

I look forward to reading your tweets. See you in Twitterland.