A couple of days ago I asked for readers to submit their questions on Twitter for me to answer. Well 4 of you did, and here they are – with my thoughts! ( I wont say answers because some of them are not looking for answers, but more opinions)

Twitter Questions from Bari of 201art.com

1. How can Twitter help business and how does it help celebrities?

You have to go into Twitter with a plan, just like with anything. If you go in know what you want to acheive from Twitter then you can focus your efforts on that goal instead of getting sidetracked by the latest fads.
Some of the way Twitter can help business could be:

• Publicity
  Building publicity for a business is so important, because the more people who know about your business the more customers you will have – if you are targetting the right people. The key is where to find the right people to build publicity. When you are trying to use Twitter to gain exposure for your business you are looking for new people, who have never heard of your business – not existing customers.The best way to find people who might be interested in your business is to find your competitors or other twitter users who focus on something similar to you and see who is following them. A great tool for this issearch tool at twitter.grader.com.
• Conversion
  Once you are finding people who may be interested in your product, how do you go about converting them to clients and customers? This is where offering a free product or report in exchange for their details comes in handy. For example, I have just soft launched a new free report that I have written on the power of Twitter and using Twitter alone I have gained 25 new subscribers to my email list! That is 25 people that I can email on a regular basis eventually turning them into customers.
• Informing Clients
  Don’t forget your current clients. Twitter isn’t just for branding, but also for keeping your current customers up to date with the happenings of your business – and your latest offers! Why not ask your customers if they have Twitter?

Could not the way Twitter helps business be the same for celebrities?

For celebrities, they are their business! So I don’t see why celebrities could not use Twitter exactly the same as any other business. That is what I would be doing if I was a celebrity.

2. How does Twittering… help the public get a sense of purpose?

Maybe I am reading this question the wrong way, but I do not think that Twitter should give you a sense of purpose. You should already have a purpose for whatever you are doing before Twitter, and should only be used to help you achieve your purpose.

Twitter Questions from Meryl of MDPPublicity

What, in your opinion, is the best way for a writer and/or publicist to use twitter? Is it to ask questions, offer advice, promote something, something else?

I would use the same steps as I listed above for starters but here are a few more detailed suggestions for you personally.

• Create a free report or ebook about your service
  This is something that people looking to use a service like yours will be interested to learn, and if they are getting it for free, then you have a great chance to convert them to mailing list subscribers.
• Offer it to all new followers
  I know a lot of people  are against sending DM’spromoting yourself as soon as people follow you, but if you work it well I have found it to convert extremely well!
• Add Value
  Every day you should be posting one or two small pearls of wisdom from your plethora of knowledge. This will keep people reading, and what is stopping you from adding a link back to your website after each one? If your tweets are valuable people won’t mind.
• Promoting Things
  As This twitter account would be for your business, then I would advice against promoting other peoples products. Limit your promotion to yourself and your business – it will be worth it in the long run.

Twitter Questions from Kristi of Kikolani

I would like to know what you suggest for Twitter background sizing? My custom background doesn’t cut it under 1280 resolution, and now there are those smaller notebooks that only handle a 1024 resolution.

Without seeing your specific Twitter background it is hard to give advice on your personal background, but I design all my twitter backgrounds to fit on 1024 width screen resolutions. If you look at my Twitter profile @StandOutBlogger you will notice that I only use the left hand side and the rest if blank. My reasoning for this, is that you cannot judge screen resolutions as everyone has a different one. So the only way to make sure that it will work on all screen resolutions is to design it to fit with the smallest one.

Also, keeping your design to just the left hand side makes it load quicker, and attracts visitors focus to just one area!

Twitter Questions from Erica of Alfred Real Estate

How long do you think it is before Twitter starts getting bashed as a sort of sleazy place on the internet? You know, like the same reputation that has become attributed with MySpace. Right now it seems like a great business tool, but you can already see people losing respect for it. It’s all very familiar.

I can definately see where you are coming from and Twitter are going to have to make a lot of changes if they don’t want to see Twitter as just a place for spammy internet marketers. In regard to how long it will take. I am not sure, it really depends, but I personally have already been added by one person about 10 times just with different variations of account name.

Twitter Questions from Charles of Big Idea Blogger

How do you get targeted followers who are genuinely interested in you vs followers who follow you only on the condition that you follow them?

This is a really good question and one I am still trying to totally work out myself.But here are a few suggestions:

• Have a twitter button on your blog
  That way people who like the way you write will have a means to follow you on Twitter.
• Hold conversations through Twitter with other users
  This allows you account to be shown on their profiles when they respond to you, displaying your account to a lot of people you could not have targetted. This means if you are holding intellegent conversation, you may pick up a few new followers who like what you say.

I hope these questions and the responses I have given were helpful, if you feel that you have something to input to these questions I would love for you to leave a comment.

About Thomas Sinfield

Thomas run multiple blogs and is busy testing different strategies and systems to increase profitability and exposure. He is currently working on a new project (yes another blog) that is set to be his most profitable yet.