Twitter is the most successful microblogging platform available today, making it possible to continuously deliver concise and relevant instant messages to your potential clients.
In the future, social media sites like Twitter (Twitter, Yammer, Cyn.in, Google Wave and others.) will be the preferred channels for finding new development project clients. Below I have listed three reasons for why I think you should be on Twitter now and in the future.
1. Find New Clients
In the near future, product and service vendors will find clients on social media sites.
Twitter, and similar sites, makes it possible to inform potential clients about yourself, your skills, and your services through personal and professional exposure.
After all, networks have always been the best way to find new clients in the offline world. And Twitter, which can, in theory, reach people everywhere, allows you to quickly make contacts on a global scale.
The best strategy is to become a reference and influencer in your field. For example, if you are a Ruby on Rails expert, post frequently about the topic and consider providing free support and solutions. You might answer a handful of Rails-related tweets each day. When potential clients need a Rails developer, they will already be familiar with your work since you will have made a name for yourself on Twitter.
2. Sell Services and Apps
Developers have created hundreds of Twitter applications, all meant to expand Twitter’s capabilities and strengthen community bonds by creating a more meaningful network.
Consider creating Twitter apps that accentuate your skills and appeal to your potential customers. If would-be clients get comfortable using a Twitter application that you created, they will presumably be comfortable working with you on other projects.
Your Twitter app could serve as a social introduction, removing the barriers between you and your potential clients, who get to know you not only as a professional through your work, but also as a person.
Sharing interests—as well as values—is, perhaps, the most effective conversion factor: Contacts flow to clients once they become your loyal followers on Twitter.
3. Customer Care
By some estimates, 80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices, implying that people tweet anytime and everywhere.
This tendency can be an advantage for developers, as well, since you will be able to support your clients from anywhere, reacting quickly to any of their special requests, if you adopt Twitter’s mobile, always-on culture.
Using Twitter, particularly direct tweets, as a form of customer care gives you the opportunity to provide excellent customer service and have a record of that customer service to share with future clients.
