How to use Twitter for promoting?

[Former_Member]

I'm new to Twitter and am wondering how people get so many followers??

Also, for those who get views/sales from using Twitter, how do you do it?

Any advice/tips on how to effectively use Twitter for promotion would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Cara

[Former_Member]

oh, my twitter is:

http://twitter.com/#!/prettiesbycara

[Former_Member]

Yes! Twitter experts please reply!

[CuddleSleepDream]

hi there

the worst, most annoying thing people can do on twitter is to use it just to "get sales" and over-promote. some people just tweet multiple times a day "check out my listing!" "look at my shop!" "look at my blog" "look at me look at me look at me!!!!"

this is annoying in real life and it is annoying on twitter.

here's my best advice: pretend twitter is a real life social event.

random tips:
- remember you are interacting with real people (as opposed to robots desperately waiting to hear about your shop's latest promotion).
- find people you think are interesting, follow them, and talk to them.
- reply to people, retweet interesting things, tweet articles and blog posts you think are interesting. start discussions. join discussions.
- don't be one-dimensional. in real life, you have lots of interests, right? talk about all of them and meet people interested in each of them. dont just limit yourself to the etsy/crafts crowd
- dont worry about numbers of followers. anyone can pay a twitter-bot to get them lots of followers, but they wont be valuable followers. you need to form relationships.

hope this helps :)

[Former_Member]

Thank you....that does help!

[Former_Member]

anyone else have any input?

[Former_Member]

I do pretty much the same thing Cuddlesweetdream wrote, I tweet about my shop but also mix it up with different venues, i.e. cooking, wine so my followers are not disenchanted with a bunch of spamming.

I also add users that are relevant to my shop, I use alot of copper findings in my jewelry, so I have many copper piping and manufacturers as my followers. I have never had a sale from twitter, but have lots of views when I post a new item.

i mostly use twitter as a connecting portal to all of my social networking sites, Facebook, Blogger, and Etsy.

[Former_Member]

This was my answer to a similar question the other night:

Participating in related twitter parties has gotten me many involved followers.

There are some for everything, just find your niche. I sell seeds here and participate in #seedchat and #gardenchat and have had a great time and gained many faithful followers who have turned into customers. I also have a natural living blog that ties in with the business and have participated in breastfeeding (#bfcafe) and attachment parenting twitter chats as well that fit in with the whole package :)

Search on twitter for words related to your niche and you'll start finding your crowd.
enjoy!

Twitter is responsible for a huge part of the traffic to both my shop and blog. Swing by if you have a chance, I'm @cubits.

[Former_Member]

Personally, I stopped using Twitter because the government is getting everyone's information on who they talk to, what they sell, where they live and everything else that comes with it. They know people are getting smart about opening up their own businesses online and they also know that Twitter is the resources to head on over to. I advertise through Facebook with my friends and family and, I have a nice link on there if anyone wants to check out my Etsy shop. Good luck and Many Blessings to you always,

[Former_Member]

I twitter, and I am now following you Cara (my username is esioul). I use twitter on and off, but I have my blog linked so anytime I post something new people know to check out my blog. I also twitter a link to my shop every now and again, but I don't spam people to much, I also talk about random things that are happening in my life. Hope this helps,

:)

[Former_Member]

Anybody knows what this # mean on twitter???

for example during euro week many used to tweet their Treasury and then put #euroweek

[GWachtelArtist]

# = hashtag goes in front of words for example #euroweek. A hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic. For example, if you search on #horse (or #Horse or #horse, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of tweets related to the that word. What you won't get are tweets that say "I love my horse" because "horse" isn't preceded by the hash tag. Hope this helps.