• By Cathy Goodwin
• Published 05/12/2009
• Writing for the Web

Online business marketing typically includes social marketing. Increasingly social marketing has come to mean participating in Twitter. But many business fail to realize that their Twitter accounts need to be set up to build relationships with prospective clients, allies, suppliers and joint venture partners. Instead, they often focus on getting a nice photo and a clever, show-stopping background. Graphic images are critical, but visitors will want to know something about who you are. They are asking themselves, “Do I want to follow this person?” If you’re trying to make connections with prospective business allies, it makes sense to help them identify you easily. This challenges call for a special form of copywriting. Your first copywriting challenge is to create a bio that skips “cute” in favor of sharing a direct, concise statement about you and your business. Your second challenge is to create a landing page designed to meet the needs of visitors who come from Twitter instead of the search engines. Recently I came across a business owner who had found a home on Twitter. Her tweets — the 140-character posts that Twitter allows — suggested she was a business consultant who specialized in a particular target market. My client was also targeting this very narrow, very specialized niche.

Of course I took a quick peek at the consultant’s 140-character online bio. Like many online business owners, she tried to play down her sk

ills. She wanted to sound like an all-around nice person. So she listed a number of qualities (I’m disguising the details): mom, consultant, foodie, member of religious group, lively, sports nut and so on. But what I really wanted to see was something like, “I work with solo-preneurs who like to cook and want to become profitable personal chefs.” Or, “I work with dentists who are trying to reach clients interested in major cosmetic changes.” I wanted to know if she worked with a specific target market and if she helped other who wanted to reach that market. If the answers were “yes” and “yes,” I could refer her to my own client. So I skipped over to the live link she provided, hoping for a website that would make everything clear. Did I discover what this business owner offered? No! I found a nice photo and a brief sales pitch to sign up for her ezine. Squeeze pages often make sense for capturing opt-in information from website visitors who find you through search engines. They know what they’re looking for. They mainly want to know, “Am I on the right page?” Twitter visitors are different. They come to your Twitter home, review your Tweets, and (ideally) ask, “What’s this person about?” And, “Are you someone I might do business with?”

You need to provide a clear, simple bio and a link to a special landing page designed for Twitter-generated traffic. This single page will serve as a guide to your background, products and services, easily visible in a single glance. This way you make it easy for visitors to recognize you as a potential business ally.