Twitter is an excellent way to get short instant messages out to your customers and potential clients. Done right it can prove to be an incredibly effective marketing tool – with millions of potential customers logging in and using Twitter every day you have ample opportunity to build existing relationships and forge new ones. Many successful companies are already using Twitter as a marketing tool but it’s never too late to get started. Below are seven twitter sales tips to help you increase the number of leads you generate using Twitter:

Use your Twitter bio effectively

The tweets you issue are not the only way of communicating with people on twitter. If you are communicating effectively prospects are likely to check out your Twitter bio, use this bio as an opportunity to draw in more leads – include a call to action and encourage prospects to contact you regarding your products or services.

Offer competitions

Sometimes you need to offer a little extra something to get your potential leads interested and to capture their details for a follow-up. The key here is to offer something that potential clients will be interested in but people you don’t want as clients won’t, you don’t want to receive a list of entrants who aren’t interested in your products because this information will not result in new clients – the leads will only be a waste of your sales team’s time.

Create a relevant landing page

While you can direct the leads you meet direct to your company website you might do better with something a little more personalized. This is especially the case if each of your individual sales people is working on Twitter under their own name – they may each need a form online to capture details of their prospects.

Use Twitter search

Twitter’s own search function can be incredibly useful when trying to generate leads. Search for specific terms that relate to your industry, company or product to help you find possible leads. In particular you might want to look for questions being asked – anyone asking a question about your industry or product is likely to be interested in it and by engaging and providing useful answers you can set yourself up as a friendly, helpful expert.

Connect your blog

Your company or personal work blog can be a powerful tool to help bring in leads from Twitter. By linking up your blog and your Twitter account you can provide high quality material to your prospective clients, and because most blog posts should have a call to action at the end this will expose readers to more opportunities to engage and make purchases.

Offer something valuable

The information you offer on Twitter should always be valuable and useful to your potential clients – don’t make pointless tweets, your aim is to illustrate to them the worth of your company and services through your communications. While many people do use Twitter to offer personal views and opinions on a whole range of things happening in their lives your business account should be focused and targeted on providing useful, valuable information. Anything less than this will detract from your brand and company image.

Be personal

People relate far better to other people than they do to faceless businesses. While a company account is useful and carries some influence you may also want to encourage your sales team to each get their own individual account for business purposes. Each person can bring their own individual style, knowledge and skills to play and as they are a real person can better create relationships with potential leads and existing customers. This relationship will lead to increased orders and sales if correctly nourished.