There’s no doubt Twitter is becoming a very popular social media tool for both business and personal use. It’s easy and fun. If used properly it can help you build your direct sales business by connecting you with prospective team members and potential customers. If used improperly it can be a waste of time and even damage your reputation.

Lisa Young (Follow @lisarobbinyoung on Twitter) offers these tips to get you started on the right foot:

Twitter Tips For Direct Sellers
By Lisa Young

As a target marketing specialist for direct sales reps, I spend a lot of time testing new strategies to help direct sales reps reach and serve their customers. My current favorite is twitter.

Twitter is an obvious choice for connecting real time with friends or followers. It’s quick and relatively easy to navigate. Simply create an i.d., and start looking for people to spread your message.

The trouble comes when a person is brand new and has no idea how/where to begin.

Twitter is not a platform for heavy selling. Rather, it’s a great place to introduce yourself, share more about who you are, and then open the door to potential business ventures. Heck, you only have 140 characters per tweet, and if you want people to share those tweets, you need to keep it under 120!

In the interests of etiquette, here are a few simple tips to help direct sellers make the most of twitter:

1. Be genuine. This is at the heart of everything twitter represents. Select a user name that reflects who you are, rather than your product or company name. In fact, most companies prohibit use of their name in that manner anyway, so why risk it?

People will gravitate to who you are first, THEN to what you offer.

2. Provide value. You’ve heard me say this time and again. People are always asking themselves, “why should I believe/listen you?” We are deluged with thousands of “advertising” messaged every single day. Your tweets need to stand out, provide value to your market and serve the very people you’re trying to reach.

3. Be personal. By that, I mean resist the temptation to automate your folowing/unfollowing or direct messaging.There are appropriate ways to use automation with twitter. I’ve tested dozens of applications that were developed to maximize the efficiency of twitter. My results conclude that autofollows and autoDM’s just cause trouble.

Take the time to make the connection manually – which will avoid the need to unfollow at a later date. Yes, it means your number of followers may grow more slowly, but you can be sure that the followers you do have are actually INTERESTED in what you have to say.

4. Be patient. If you’re being true to who you are, you’re not likely to get a million followers overnight, but you WILL generate a following of people that know like and trust you. Word will spread as your followers share your message with their followers.

This is why I stress that social media and online marketing does not replace your home party business, but is an additional marketing component to running your business like a real business. Yes, there are people who have all but retired from doing home parties, but it didn’t happen overnight.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a twitter account (or any single marketing strategy) is the fastest way to riches. It can help increase your reach dramatically, but it’s certainly not an overnight solution.

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© 2009 Lisa Robbin Young.

Want more help understanding twitter and how to apply it to your business? Explore Lisa’s new course: Twitter Secrets for Direct Sellers [http://www.homepartysolution.com/twittesecrets].

The only certified Direct Sales Marketing Coach in the WORLD, Lisa Robbin Young helps demystify the business side of running a direct sales business like a real business instead of an expensive hobby. Register today for her free member community & target marketing program for direct sellers at http://www.homepartysolution.com

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Every Friday users make recommendations for who to follow on Twitter. It’s a fun way to find new friends. It’s a bit like a who’s who among your followers.

Of course I think all of my friends are worth following, but here are a few suggestions to start with (in no particular order):

And in a category all his own… @RoyMontero
who I suspect would really rather talk to you on Skype than Tweet.

There are many more people I can recommend and I’ll do so in the weeks
to come by adding to this list regularly. On July 17th I consolidated the list and from now on, when I add friends they are marked NEW for a week. Comments dated before July 17th refer to earlier versions of this post.

If you aren’t already following me, please do.

Choose a free graphic from Twitter Signature Styles and gather Twitter followers from your message board signatures, blog, or website.

Here’s my favorite

Claim yours at Twitter Signature Styles

Updated June, 2009 because things change. Comments posted before June, 2, 2009 refer to the original version posted last July.

I just finished going through a stack of email notifications for my new Twitter followers and it prompted me to let followers know how I decide whether or not to follow in return.

Some Twitter users believe that etiquette dictates that one return the favor by following anyone who follows you. As much as I’d like to always return the favor of following, I just can’t. I can only read so many tweets so I just can’t follow everyone.

At least once a week I go through my Twitter notifications and look at the profiles of everyone who is following me. Here’s how I decide whether or not to follow you:

• If I know you personally or have developed an online relationship with you through some other online venue, I’ll follow you.
• If I don’t know you, but your profile and tweets reveal who you are, and you are someone I think I can relate to either personally or professionally, I’ll follow you.
• If you interact regularly with someone I already follow, I’ll probably follow you.

NOTE: Post edited in early June, 2009 to add:

• If it seems like you use programs to automatically follow anyone and everyone you possibly can, I won’t follow you. It’s my preference to use Twitter in a more personal manner and therefore I do all my following and unfollowing manually.
• I don’t mind if you personally recommend products and use affiliate links. I do mind if you allow a service to send ads through your Twitter account. I try not to follow anyone who participates in some sort of auto advertising program for Twitter.
• If I follow you but you don’t follow back, it’s okay. I understand and I won’t automatically unfollow you.

If I don’t follow you, please don’t hesitate to ask me to reconsider after you update your profile or when you start tweeting more. Or if you think I overlooked the notification or made a mistake because you meet one of my decision criteria above drop me a line. I can be persuaded to change my mind.

If you are following me, thank you. I appreciate it.

If you aren’t following me and you’d like to see what I tweet about, you can click here to find and follow me on twitter.. If I don’t meet your expectations, you can always stop following me. (Don’t worry, I won’t feel bad about it.)

How do you decide who to follow on Twitter?

I’ve been using Twitter for just over a year now and had developed a fairly productive Twitter habit. But then as easily as I got into the habit, I took a week long break last month and completely broke my Twitter habit. I haven’t been “social” on a regular basis in almost a month.

Why do I want it back?

In the few weeks that I’ve neglected social networking and marketing, my website visitor stats have dropped, resulting in a loss of income. Can I prove without a doubt that the loss is a direct result of my lack of participation? No. And in fact, I’d guess that in the same time period, I also spent less time on other marketing methods. But I am sure my absence has had a greater negative effect than cutting back on my other marketing techniques. Social media marketing is not as passive as other methods. Success depends on being social and providing high quality, information and interesting interaction on a regular basis.

So I’m working on getting back in the social media marketing habit. I try to check in with my Twitter friends and followers most afternoons during the work week. See you there!

Do you have a Twitter habit and has it helped your bottom line?

Over the past couple of days several popular bloggers are discussing the value of social media services like Twitter. They are asking themselves and others to evaluate their goals for the service and decide if it’s a marketing tool or a just social interaction. Or can it really be both?

The beauty of a service like Twitter is that it becomes what the community wants it to be. And like any community, as it grows, smaller groups and sub-communities separate themselves, mix, overlap, and continue to evolve. I think we’ll all be able to find the balance that works for us.

In her post, Social Marketing Pitfalls & The Twitter Time Suck, Lynn Terry’s definition of “social” explains exactly how I’ve tried to conduct myself in business all along; by being personable and not so personal. Lynn wrote,

“…But when it comes to marketing or networking, the word ’social’ pertains to being personable (vs personal), which – in my opinion – should be accomplished while still retaining an appearance of professionalism.”

It’s how I’d like to continue to conduct myself in the social media services.

But for others, online social media holds a much different appeal. In part, I think it’s just another aspect of a whole new communication era. Personal communication is becoming less and less private. The cell phone often makes at least one half of what used to be totally private conversations, public. Video cameras are everywhere and events that once might have been a temporary embarrassment witnessed by a few, can become a worldwide humiliation replayed over and over again. It’s a chicken and an egg question. Are our expectations of privacy so diminished that we’re willing to share more? Or has our willingness to share more led to the proliferation of opportunities to do so?

As others have suggested, we each need to define our social media goals and find a balance. While I wish I had done more planning before I started, I’m not sure I could have clearly defined what I wanted until I had some experience. I’ll approach the services differently now and hopefully find my balance.

Where do you stand? Are social media services marketing or socializing?

Follow me on Twitter

Inspired by Lynn Terry’s Webinar yesterday, I signed up for Twitter. I’m still trying to figure it all out so I’m not yet sure I know what I’m doing, but I can see how it can be a lot of fun. My goal is to use it as another business tool; it’s part of my plan to become more “social” online.

The whole idea of using social marketing came about as part of last month’s “Be A Better Blogger” challenge over at ClickNewz.com. I blogged about the social marketing task here.

Do you Twitter? If so be sure to leave your link in the comments and I’ll come by. What other social media are you using?

Follow me on Twitter.