Experts & Gurus: How to Sell Yourself Using Twitter

How to Market Your Expertise Using Twitter

When you market your business, are you actually marketing your expertise? If you do, you are what I like to call a “guru.” And, if you are a guru, it is relatively easy to sell yourself on Twitter—if you know how.

Any business that sells expertise across the nation can find its market on Twitter. That includes lawyers (especially those with a narrow field of expertise), business consultants of all kinds, authors, professional speakers, engineers, medical professionals, and many more. If you are unemployed, you may also be able to use this technique to find a new job.

The key is to identify well-known people, or people who just happen to have a large network of followers on Twitter, who share your expertise or business interest.

There are two ways to do this:
1. Just search your brain databases. Who are the recognized leaders in your field? You can bet that they have a Twitter account. If it is an account that is being actively used, and has a number of followers, you have just found a potential goldmine.
2. The second way is easy, too. Sign up for a NutShellMail account. NutShellMail is a great free service that allows you to receive emailed updates from your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, and Twitter postings from those you follow. It also allows you to receive Twitter tweets on a topic or topics of your choice. So, for example, I have signed up to receive tweets about “search engine optimization.” NutShellMail makes it easy to post a response to a tweet or to opt to follow a Twitter account holder by providing a link from the email. Each NutShellMail email contains up to 20 tweets related to your topic.
So, let me give you an example of how this works. The other day, I became a Twitter “follower” of San Antonio pastor and Christian author Max Lucado. The next day, I got a notification that a different Christian author had signed up to be one of my followers on Twitter.

Think about this. The less well-known author who signed up to follow me may or may not have a lot of interest in my tweets, which are mainly about Internet marketing topics. But, you can believe that when I found out that he wanted to follow me, I became curious about him. I looked at his Twitter page, and decided to reciprocate and follow him. Who knows, one day, I may buy one of his books.

Clearly, the key to this was his recognition that if I was interested in tweets from Max Lucado, I might also be interested in tweets from another Christian author.

Beyond identifying people with networks who might be interested in your expertise, there are two things you need to do to make this work.
1. Your bio statement needs to clearly spell out your expertise. Mine, for example, says: “ Internet marketing consultant offering a personal approach to small businesses.” Max Lucado’s says “Minister. Author. Husband. Dad. Counting on heaven to make sense of this earth.” Both of these statements are short, concise, and yet provide some differentiation.
2. Your postings must be designed to interest your followers. I signed up to follow Max Lucado because I know that he lives to teach others about God, and I expect he will also use Twitter to share how God is working in his life. So, if the other Christian author posts tweets that fit this framework, I will continue to follow him, as well.

When a person first gets started using any social media, it is difficult to justify the amount of time needed to build up your networks. NutshellMail is a great way to simplify that. And, once you have some followers, you will be amazed at how easy it is to become “prolific” in your postings, just by sharing/forwarding ideas that others in your network are sending to you.

For more advice on building your Twitter network of followers, give me a call at 720-341-6336 (Denver Metro callers) or 210-392-5649 (San Antonio callers). This month, a 20-minute consultation on this topic is at no charge.