Post By Loretta Oliver

Twitter gets used for many things every day, and while you’ll find people selling products, ebooks, seminars, and classes the one thing that is often overlooked is the use of Twitter to connect with clients. You can do this in a few ways with just a few minutes of your time each day.

First, there’s your current client base. Stay in touch with them on Twitter, follow them, reply directly to them, retweet them when appropriate, say good morning to them, and include them in your Follow Friday shout outs. They’ll appreciate the extra attention and that you recommended them or retweeted them. It also keeps in you in the front of their mind for the  next time they need your services, which might just be today.

Then of course if you have room in your schedule you can be looking for new clients while you’re on Twitter. That might sound hard, but Twitter can do most of the work for you. Just take advantage of the search feature and look for your service. If you’re using Hootsuite you can set up a column to keep an eye on certain keywords. For example, I have mine set up to keep an eye on transcription, transcription service, transcribed, and transcribe.

This allows me to see not only when people are looking for transcription services, but also what’s going on around the net in the transcription world. This often leads me to commenting on relevant blogs and getting involved in discussions about transcription, which of course leads to more backlinks and higher search engine rankings as well.

Those are the basics of using Twitter to connect with your clients, the bare minimum of it all. Of course, going beyond that is always a great thing. You can offer special discounts or bonuses on Twitter to attract new clients, or to remind your current client list to come back and revisit you.

Even the smallest effort and connection on Twitter is going to be appreciated by your clients. Everyone likes to be remembered and enjoys being recommended on Twitter. They’ll remember you made that connection and chances are someday when it’s appropriate they’re going to recommend you too. It’s a win-win situation for all.

Loretta Oliver offers quality transcription services and 50% of her current client base has come just from chatting up her business on Twitter. She also authored a recent ebook called Transcription Crash Course to help others start offering their own transcription service and work from home.