The Answer is Yes…..

More twitter followers need not mean more Popular, though many wish to think the other way. We are not talking about celebrities, but the typical you and me who are known only to a few of our friends and their friends and now may be to a few hundreds, thanks to the arrival of the Social Media.

If you have thousands of followers and a 5% of the same number as the ones you are following, you are kind of popular. If you have thousands of almost equal number of followers and following, you are just shaking hands with a lot of folks without looking at their faces.

It is practically not possible to be genuinely interested and follow, contribute and enrich the tweet lives of thousands all at the same time.

But twitter is all about following and being followed isn’t it?

Good question, it sure is, but I am here to writing this blog so we can make some business sense and not play the game of u-follow I-follow

So for those playing the game, enjoy but never regret the time spend on this and understandably you will be happy, given you achieve what you want

Now for those who are trying to make some business sense of social media and trying to justify their time spend on this, the good news is it’s a great tool, and the even better news is that you don’t need a load of followers to start making business sense of this tool.

I have just 124 followers and I follow 116 people, and it is still making business sense to me and justifying the time spend

How you make business sense is quite up to you as business dynamics are different for all, before you succumb to the glorious stories of gaining brand advantage and the possibilities of reachability via twitter, you need to sit back and evaluate what makes business sense to you, Branding, Lead Generation, Actual converted business, Valuable information that can enrich your business life etc….

Here is a few steps I followed that made business sense using twitter

1. Before starting, ask the question why should you use Twitter?
2. Who do you wish to connect via twitter? (name a few that matter to you)
3. Why are you connecting with them?
4. Who should follow you on Twitter? (name a few whose following you will matter to you)
5. Why should they be following you? (your need to be followed and their reason to follow you)
6. How much time do you plan to spend on Twitter
7. How much time will you give to evaluate your time spend
8. What will be a justifiable return for you to keep tweeting?
9. What tools should you use to make sure you can efficiently track, manage and use twitter?

My primary tool in using twitter in business is listening to the tweets as they contain valuable information not found elsewhere.

I provide technology solutions to businesses and this twitter listening helps me in the following

• Know who my potential prospects are, and also get me to know more about my prospects and see if they have a concern that my skills can address.
• Know who my prospects are following (Here people following corporate brands give me more valuable information)
• Being Ready with information as I try connecting Offline with a prospect

You can connect with the Author at Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed or LinkedIn

Social Media is a great place for personal connections, and can be even more powerful as a business connection point. But if not properly managed and monitored, you can end up spending much more time than you intent to and be carried away in the maze, not able to give proper business justification for the same

Formulating a plan and deciding where all to connect is often the first step to start building and assuming that many people already are part of one social network or the other here is a process that can make life easier and make you reachable

An underlining philosophy is that you need to be visible, connected and reachable.

Step 1 – Start a Blog
If you don’t you are loosing out on a very powerful tool that can improve your reach and reputation.

Step 2 – Use LinkedIn
since many professionals are part of LinkedIn, the success is not in registering but in using it to connect, involve in discussions and more

Step 3 – Join Facebook
Make Facebook your preferred Social Networking platform, you will be amazed to see how many people both personal and professional use it and this also gives you a basic idea into what interests the people you know.

Step 4 – Search Twitter
People keep tweeting about your expertise and area of interest almost every time. As the most powerful and emerging business and personal branding arena, you need to be on it

Step 5 – Share FriendFeed
Let people know what you read, and know what the people who interest you like. Get connected, converse and build

Step 6 – Keep Bookmarking
Digg, Delicious, Magnolia, Reddit, and more, share your thoughts via the service of your choice.

Step7 – Subscribe to a Reader
Google reader, my favorite spot on the web keeps me informed with news, alerts on my business and prospects.

Now for the biggest problem of all, finding the time to use all these; there are a variety of tools that can help you to integrate and make these process faster.

If you start spending ½ hour per day managing your Social Media Relationships, you can find in a few days that your ½ hour actually helps you to be connected which otherwise would take you around 5 hours to do so.

Imagine the possibilities of connecting with all your business and personal contacts on a daily basis and still only having to spend the time you take to have coffee with one

Social Media Relationships will influence the relation building process across businesses with much vigor than it happens now. While the majority of the Social media space is being used by personal choice, the time is not far when people start using it for strategic business needs. Sales is an evident beneficiary for this, so will support, account management and all other CRM, PRM and other RM systems benefit from a collaboration and integration with the Social Media

An efficient way to harness social media intelligence to use in business is still not a true reality, meaning though tools are being designed and released daily on analyzing, and collecting data from the Social media landscape, not much people seem to have a firm idea what you do with all these info. It sounds like a great trip to take but how do you know that it heads in the right direction?

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