Eustondigital blog

10 tips when using Twitter for your Business

Twitter represents a huge opportunity for any business to have a one-many conversation with their current and potential customers. Despite this only a minority of businesses have made the leap onto Twitter. Those that have are often unsure what to do when they start.

With that in mind, we’ve written a basic guide on how to use Twitter for your business.

Choosing a Full Name and Username.

Your details will be displayed in the page title (and therefore in the SERPs) as:

Fullname1 + Fullname2 (username) on Twitter

Therefore the full name and username will influence the keywords for which your Twitter profile will appear in the SERPs.

Either Choose:

Full Name1: Keyword1
Full Name2: Keyword2
Username: Company Name

Or

Full Name1: CompanyName
Full Name2: Blank
Username: Keyword

Following people

1.    To start off, just follow those people you are genuinely interested in. This might be your industry leader, your industry magazine, a national paper, or a commentator in your market.
2.     Follow your customers. Show that you’re taking an interest in your customers  by following them. Doing so encourages them to follow you back, and opens up  Twitter as a channel of communicate with them.
3.    Don’t follow people just because they follow you, unless they are your customer. If someone follows you and you don’t know who they are, and aren’t interested in what they’ve got to say, don’t follow them. A classic way to build your followerbase is by following people who follow you. But at the end of the day you end up receiving lots of irrelevant Tweets in your timeline, which makes it hard to discern those you are genuinely interested in.
4.    Try to avoid following people who have a high number of followers and follows. These will probably be using auto-follow tools to build their follower base. Lots are US based.

Tweet your News

1.    When you you add a new post onto your blog, Tweet it with a headline and a link.
2.    When you change your prices, have an offer, or have other news that you wouldn’t otherwise have on the blog, Tweet it
3.    If you have a problem, some downtime or delivery issues, make your followers aware by Tweeting that. Your natural tendency might be to hide bad news, but Twitterers will appreciate your openness. And far better that they find out about downtime from you, rather than finding out through some other means. You need to control that sort of news. And it might save your support team a few calls too.

Tweeting other people’s news and blog posts

1.    If you follow news from several websites and blogs, set up an feed reader that includes all your data sources.
2.    When you read something that you find interesting, Tweet a link to it and a summary, or your take. If its interesting your users will appreciate being notified of it, and may ‘respect’ your opinion a bit more.

Commenting on other people’s Tweets

1.    Try to read the Tweets of the people you follow. If you’re interested in what they’re saying, reply @them
2.    When people send you an @message, make sure you respond to it in a timely manner. Nothing stamps a conversation out as quickly as a gap of a few hours between Tweets.

ReTweeting (RT)

1.    When someone gives you, your website or your company a compliment then ReTweet it. To do this,  copy their Tweet into your own post and preface it with RT @them: This will create a positive glow to your profile, and demonstrates how good you are to your other followers.
2.    When you see somthing of interest that you want to attribute to the original person then RT their Tweet in the same way.
3.    Bond with your customers by occasionally retweeting their messages to your audience

Direct Messages

1.    If you want to keep it private, then direct message people (DM)
2.    Wehn someone Retweets your messages thank them privately with a DM
3.    If you’re asking someone to share potentially sensitive information then publicly ask them to DM you with the details.

Editorial Guidance for Tweets

1.    Include a mix of Tweets. Send links to your site, some to others, and occasionally have no links at all – just a statement. Use all types of Tweets, @Tweets and ReTweets.
2.    Tweet any comments you get on your blog comments and include a link to those comments. This shows your followers that there is a conversation going on, encourages people to get back to your website. Try to get a debate going
3.    Asking questions generate interest, interaction, conversation and answers
4.    Remember: a lot more people read your tweets than respond to them. If you’re using Twitter for customer service then its an opportunity to showcase your finest work!

Tools to save time

1.    Ping.fm: Useful for distributing your posts to multiple microblogging platforms
2.    Shorten URL Mozilla Add on. Lets you drag a URL shortner shortcut into your  browser toolbar, makes for quick URL shortening
3.    TweetDeck. A great desktop application that lets you monitor for mentions, searches and direct messages across multiple Twitter accounts.
4.    Tweetpic. Allows you to link images to your posts.

Tracking

Twitter traffic is hard to track with analytcs platforms it usually comes from redirects. These can help

1.    Bit.ly: This URL shortner can give you click data about the traffic that your shortened URLs are generate
2.    Gooogle Analytics / DC-Storm. More long winded. Manually add a tracking URL onto your website address before you shorten it.

This isn’t an A-Z of Twitter but is a good and easy guide to help your business start using this social media platform. Get it right and Twitter can become a powerful way to interact with your current and future customers.

If you need any help with your Social Media Marketing then please get in touch.

Tags: twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.