How to use Twitter to Generate Leads

Twitter is the talk of town these days. Actually, it has been for some time now. I remember the first time I saw Twitter. I thought to myself, “this is one useless service.” There, I said it. I was wrong, and there is nothing with being wrong. It’s so easy to make judgments based on a first impression. But now seeing folks who are driving thousands of visitors to their sites using Twitter, I realize that perhaps I should have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon sooner. I guess you can say it’s never too late.

But Twitter is not just about talking about what you are cooking right now, or how you are feeling (depressed, happy, …). You can actually have a profitable affiliate business with the help of Twitter. I guess if you have paid attention to the Twitter community, you have seen guys such as Joel Comm trying to encourage their affiliates to promote products on Twitter. What most marketers don’t understand about Twitter is that it’s different from the traditional channels that we are used to working with. Twitter is not Adwords, and it’s definitely not your newsletter. Twitter is an alive community that is very judgmental and always on the look out for real value. So, it’s essential to know your environment before actually jumping in and playing with the sharks.

Twitter is a goldmine but comes with numerous pitfalls. If you go in with a closed mind, trying to do what you have been doing for the past 5 years, you are going to mess up. And when you do, Twitter will be useless to you. Here are a few things that I have personally learned the hard way:

• Be Authentic: being authentic is usually the best way to get your business going on Twitter. There are so many marketers who go on Twitter and start playing around. Trust me, being authentic pays on Twitter.
• Be Yourself: going back to the previous point, be yourself. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Twitter is a big community, and you can’t just slide in a character on Twitter (unless that’s what you do for a living). I know guys like O’reilly or Hannity do their characters well on TV, and they have become their characters over time, but you can’t pull that off on Twitter.
• Be Unique: I have seen so many affiliates who just grab the copy provided by the merchants and post it to Twitter. Sounds funny but it’s true. Some merchants are trying to be “innovative,” so what they have done is they have created these Twitter snippets that you can grab and post to Twitter. But it’s a no no no! You should not post anything that you get from the merchant. Be unique or forget Twitter.
• Be Polite: Twitter is a public place. Sure. You can’t see folks’ faces, and you probably don’t know most of folks who are following you. But you should never act as a troll on Twitter. It’s just not worth it.
• Be Useful: Just posting affiliate links to your Twitter account is going to get you ignored by the community. Try being useful for a change. Post interesting articles. Use services such as Delicious or Digg to find good articles and share them on Twitter. Try to add something to the community.

Twitter has the potential to be a huge commission driver for affiliates. But you need to take an indirect approach with it. It’s not Adwords, it’s not your newsletter, and it’s certainly not a forum you can spam. So just do it right!