Should Twitter be on your next list?

If you read almost any of the online marketing forums, you will find strong advocates for building an email list.  The idea being that this list contains people who are already interested in your market and what you have to say and, as you continue to provide value to that list, so they will tend to come back to you for future purchases of your products.  Sounds great so far, but…

As Email gets more and more clogged with Spam, and as people sign up for more and more lists – I can see this going the same way as banner ads and pop-ups – just becoming part of the noise!  Certainly in my inbox, there are a very few subscribed emails that I keep safe, and even those don’t always get read as quickly as the author would like.

Enter Twitter.  This is being touted as the biggest internet explosion for this year, and I think it holds the key to that list building challenge.  Look at it this way – there is a ready made collection of people, already online, and stating what they are interested in via their profile.  Once you introduce yourself to a few members of your niche, by simply following what they have to say, so they and their followers will take a look at what you have to offer.  This is the ultimate “opt-in” communication!  No cries of “spam”, no blocking by random ISPs – anyone reading your posts CHOSE to be there!

Here’s the kicker – but also the opportunity – anyone just posting for the sake of it will quickly lose their followers.  But if you are genuinely providing value, then the Twitter community will reward you with followers and, ultimately, traffic to your website.  Yet another opportunity to be successful on the internet, just by providing quality content!