I read Amber Naslund’s terrific blog entry “How I Made $100K With Twitter” today. Great title to suck you in panting “how?!???” “really!!!”. Amber’s story IS about making money using the social web but it is NOT a fairytale story about how to get rich quick. How does Amber attribute $100,000 of income to Twitter? To summarize:

Step 1: She followed people on Twitter in industries that interested her – and she listened.

Step 2: Then she entered into conversations with these followers.

Step 3: Through these conversations she built relationships.

Step 4: And when it came time to tell these followers what she did for a living, she told them.

Step 5: Some of those followers needed her expertise, so she wrote proposals and sent off pitches.

Steps 6, 7, 8: She won some work, worked really hard and then repeated the process.

Amber notes in her blog:

“The magic in making money with social media isn’t that the site or social network becomes a revenue center itself. I didn’t sell stuff on Twitter. I gave people access to me and my expertise, and paid attention to when the time might be right to talk business. That’s the trick here, folks. Social media is rarely the cash register. It’s communication tools that help form the foundation for healthy business relationships that might eventually lead to sales elsewhere. Whether you’re B2B or B2C.”

Communication tool. Remember that. Twitter is simply, beautifully and brilliantly, a communication tool.

My favorite quotable line from Amber’s blog is:

“Twitter was just the handshake that got the conversation started.”

Use Twitter to get the conversation started. Have a good “handshake” by being the sort of person on Twitter that others want to talk to.

And all this talk on the social web about manners and introductions reminds me a bit of Alice in Wonderland and the advice of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum on how to make an introduction:

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum [together, singing]: How do ya do and shake hands, shake hands, shake hands. How do ya do and shake hands and state your name and business.

Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum [both spoken]: That’s manners!

Amber Naslund’s blog was originally published on February 24, 2010 [altitudebranding.com]