Posted By Amanda Collins on November 29, 2010

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While many business professionals, companies, and job seekers are on Twitter, I really wonder how many of them have a method to their madness. While Twitter can certainly be a way to keep up on the conversation of colleagues and friends, there’s so much more that can happen if the power is harnessed!

Google Alerts
Want to know what’s new in your industry? Google Alerts are a free notification system of the latest and greatest on the Internet. Search on keywords such as your name, company name, job titles, or more broad topics related to your industry. You’ll get daily or up-to-the-minute emails on news and blogs relevant to your keywords. Then, you can not only comment on the blogs, but you can also post links to your Twitter page so you look like you’re the first to know what’s new. It’s a great way to grab some RT love online.

Hashtags
If you’re new to Twitter, you may be wondering what that pound symbol (#) is all about. It’s a way that Tweeters have to denote keywords. As a user, you can go to Twitter Search and look up hashtags to see what’s happening now or in the recent past. One commonly used hashtag is #FF, which stands for “Follow Friday” and allows the Twitter community to share some worthy peers with their followers.

Twitter Keyword Searches
I don’t know anyone who uses Twitter through the Web these days. For me, Tweetdeck works great, although some like Hootsuite and some lesser-known applications. Tweetdeck allows you to run keyword searches in real time. If a search term isn’t pulled out with a hashtag, this is a great way to still find it. You can run your search to mirror that of your Google Alerts.

The Strategy
Once you are up on what’s happening within the Twitterverse and online through Google, what are you going to do with that information? The key is to not sell (or, for job seekers, blatantly ask for a job); instead, offer assistance and create conversations. That’s the key of social media: it needs to be social! If I see someone mention that she’s getting her résumé ready for a job search, I will offer to take a look at it for her (free, of course). If someone is preparing for an interview, I offer words of encouragement. You’ll engage and entertain folks, and you will likely see that your follow rate increases.

This isn’t a one-stop strategy, though. Once you start talking to these new people, you’ll increase your followers and may even learn their email addresses. That’s when you can work them into your drip-marketing campaign (you have one of those, right?). Although you may not get results within 20 minutes, by creating a community who sees you as the expert you are, you’ll build those results over time.

Category: Business Development
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