Twitter is one of those tools that has gotten so much media attention of late, you may be tempted to write it off as a fad.
Something better may come along in the future, but for now, there is a very important aspect of twitter you need to consider – especially in relation to how you think of it as a lead generation tool.
Imagine if you were doing email marketing, and everyone on your email list also shared their email list with you. Wouldn’t your email marketing list grow much faster that way?
Essentially, that is how twitter works. When you follow someone, they will often follow you as well. People often retweet things you say, and your message (if interesting) will be carried along.
The downside is that at any given time a lot of people are not paying attention. But where the attention may not be as focused as in email marketing, it more than makes up for it in reach and ease of use.
Twitter is unlikely to generate real leads for you directly, although I do hear of those cases.
More likely, it is going to generate traffic to your website or blog and that is where you are going to need to cement the deal and make your new visitor from twitter a real lead.
One way to do this is to offer a free white paper or an email course. Once you have the email, you can use autoresponders to follow up with your new lead and build the relationship on autopilot.