Communicate first, sell second

I don’t read Twitter direct messages anymore (unless they’re from someone I know). Why? Because I’m not interested in “enhancing” anything, I don’t want a loan and if I needed to find a business coach, I wouldn’t use one who solicited me on Twitter.

Maybe I’m missing something. Shouldn’t a direct message be used for sending a message that has value instead of using it to send a cheesy sales message? While I appreciate the “thank you for following me” direct messages, I don’t want anyone to sell me anything. Just thank me and move on. As soon as I start following you, I’ll have a clear idea of what you can do for me and whether or not I need your services.

When the need to thank and sell at the same time goes away and people use direct messages to send a non-sales message, I’ll start reading them again. Until then, I’ll stick to e-mail, Facebook and the contact form on this site.

People (and potential clients) want to hear from you…they really do. Just wait to sell them something until after your first direct message exchange.

john

January 6th, 2010 at 4:17 pm

I agree! Too many times I’ve seen people follow me & I’ll return the favour only to be tweeted “headlines” for their services – constantly. To me it’s the same as junk mail and discredits the person/business sending it.

That being said, I’ve never made a direct pitch for any of my services via twitter but use it rather as a springboard to warn people of upcoming threats, reminders or annouce neat/cool technologies.

I’ve yet to sell anything via twitter but I’m using it more to build credibility and repetitive contact.

PS You can follow me on twitter at iqcomputer