Email. Facebook. Text messages. IMing. They’re all ways that one can avoid picking up the phone and talking to a real person. I once hated making phone calls. I was afraid I’d sound stupid and make a fool of myself. (Sometimes I did, too!) But the truth is, the phone is still one of the best ways to make a connection.

Rewind back to September 26, 2007. I was just signing up for my first YouTube account. This was back before I knew anything about social media, or so I thought. I was fairly new to the world wide web at that time, but I was already marketing my family’s farm and gaining new customers. I had no idea what I was doing yet I was already successful. However, I was also in the dark about the importance of username consistency.

I like Twitter. I like it a lot. In fact, when I encounter an unwanted situation, I usually tweet about it. Why? Not because I’m trying to make my problems known to the world, but because there’s usually someone out there who can help me fix it.

Twitter 101: Five easy steps to tweet your way to success
By Mandee Widrick

It was less than a year ago that I caved and signed up for a Twitter account. You could say that I did it under peer pressure, seeing as I had no intent of ever using a website that had a maximum of 140 characters per update. The mere thought of a website that only allowed boring status updates just seemed pointless to me anyway.
Yet, being a small business owner, I was always looking for ways to market my product. I had a website for my company as well as business accounts with both MySpace and Facebook. I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least try. What I didn’t know at the time was that Twitter would open the door for more opportunities than any other social networking site I’d ever used.
Today, I’m finding that almost every company has a Twitter page, because everyone is discovering how valuable this micro-blogging service truly is. Sales leads, interviews, introductions…all of it is available right at our fingertips, and for free. All you need to get started is a little time and the basic know-how.
That said, if you are one of the many small business owners that do not have a clue how to get started with Twitter, here are five simple steps that will help you begin.

Step 1: First and foremost, you will need to set up your account by visiting www.twitter.com. If you’re setting up

Example 1

a business page, be sure use your business name as your Twitter URL so it will be easy for your customers to find you. Try to avoid the use of hyphens and underscores unless absolutely necessary, as those will just complicate the process for people that are trying to look you up. (See Example 1)

Step 2: Once your account is verified, log in and take a look around. If you’re completely new to the world of Twitter, you will want to take some time to get to know the website before you begin using it to its full potential. Add information about your company (website, bio, etc.) under the Settings option. Be sure to upload your logo or a photo of yourself, because users without a custom photo can often times be mistaken as spammers. Once this is done, go back to your Home page. You will see on the top right corner of your profile “0 Following” and “0 Followers”. These numbers will change as you begin following other users. For a complete explanation of how this works, visit http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14019.

Step 3: Now that you know how to follow people, decide whether or not you want your profile to be visible to the public. I recommend that if you are using Twitter to promote your business or services that you leave it public. However, if you would prefer to set it to private, you can do so by again visiting Settings and selecting Protect My Tweets. This can be changed at any time should you decide to update your settings later on. You will also notice in your settings that you can change your username. Unless you’re truly unhappy with your current username choice, it’s best to leave this option alone so you don’t confuse your followers.

Example 2

Step 4: It’s time for your first tweet! Keep in mind that on Twitter, it’s all about quality, not quantity. (See Example 2) Think about what you want to say to your followers. How is it relevant to them? If you overpost about things that are unimportant, you are likely to lose followers rather than gain them. Establish a relationship with other Twitter users and get to know them on a personal level. It is much like any business transaction – get to know the needs of your potential customer and make it about them, not about you. To reply to a person’s tweet, begin a new status update by typing @ then the person’s username (with no spaces in between), followed by your message. This will make your reply show up in that person’s reply timeline. You can also check for replies to your own tweets by clicking the “@yourusername” on the right of your page.

Step 5: Use Twitter on a regular basis. Don’t just set up an account and forget about it! Many successful users tweet daily as an aid to drive hits to their website, and this in turn will generate new sales leads. Once your followers begin to increase, you can start taking control of your settings by using additional Twitter services such as automatic direct messages (https://www.socialoomph.com) and evaluations to see who’s following you back and who’s not (http://dossy.org/twitter/karma) to keep things manageable. Even though Twitter is a free service that won’t require any monetary investments, it will require commitment and time. Stick with it, observe the trends and watch your sales revenue begin to increase!

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Have questions? Follow me at http://twitter.com/mandeewidrick and send me a DM (that’s Twitter lingo for “direct message”).
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If you’ve been following my recent tweets or Facebook status updates from throughout the past few days, by now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been spending endless hours studying cold-calling techniques. While I consider myself a confident sales person, I have oddly enough been finding myself hesitant to make calls to potentials clients lately. Why? is the question I kept asking. Was I afraid of encountering hang ups? Did I not want to hear the word “no”? I could not put a finger on it.

None of those things bother me too much, because I know it’s all part of life in sales. While there is always that “ugh” feeling when someone rejects me, it’s obviously not personal and it would be silly of me to take it as such.

After some serious deliberation, I finally determined that part of my problem was that I really didn’t know what I was going to say when I picked up the phone. I’ve made my share of calls to drum up new business, but I’ve always had some sort of connection with the potential client. When I had absolutely no connection whatsoever, well, I simply wouldn’t pick up the phone (and unfortunately, those names on my “need to call” list would eventually be erased from my wipe-off board).

It hit me last week that I couldn’t last very long with this way of thinking. If I didn’t know how to approach new sales leads, I needed to learn, and learn fast. So I hit up SwagBucks and Google, hoping and praying that someone out there on the internet had offered their secrets to selling print advertising over the phone.

I came across numerous resources, though most of them were trying to sell me on a training course of some sort without offering me any assistance. I did, however, find a free report from Wendy Weiss that was very helpful. (If you need any tips on cold calling, be sure to visit her website.) Wendy’s report, combined with several other notes I jotted down from various web pages, began to make me feel more confident in my ability to book meetings and sell to complete strangers.

That said, I have a list of leads I’ll be calling over the next few days. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I finally bought the original Superman movie on DVD. I figured it was a wise purchase considering I’m basing my book upon that movie to a certain extent. I already have Superman Returns, but I wanted both.

I’m also taking on two new writers for Bit & Bridle, which should help lighten my load and give me more time to work on writing my book. I might even have someone to help with marketing, woo hoo! We’ll find out this weekend.