Twitter for Businesses: DOs and DON’Ts

Social_mediaTwitter allows business owners to interact with customers in a very unique, spontaneous and quick way. With Twitter, you can market to other business owners as often as you’d like. If you “spammed” Facebook status updates or email messages, you’d get penalized. On Twitter however, you could make a new post every hour and be commended for it.

Using Twitter for business? Here are a few tips for building your readership and improving the relationship with customers.

DOs: Add a catchy bio and not just a list of keywords. Remember to include the website URL and your location.

DOs: Use outside tools. Twitter’s default interface is great for the casual user, but is missing many features for business users. For example, you can’t schedule a tweet to be sent later. Use outside applications that add functionality to Twitter.

DOs: Pay attention to your avatar & background. Having an avatar and background that resonates with your brand can work wonders. The moment someone lands on your site, they should immediately “feel” like they’re interacting with your brand.

DOs: Make it easy to follow you. Place a Twitter button on your main website, on your posts, on your pages and generally anywhere that people can find you.

DOs: Search for related keywords and answer questions. For example, if you run a travel website, search for tweets like “going to Hawaii” or “flying to New York” and send people tips about the places they’re going.

DOs: Use RT @name to retweet. The new retweet format won’t get you noticed, because it lacks the @tweet inclusion. If you’re retweeting something, make sure to use the “RT @name” format so you show up on their @ Connect tab.

DOs: Tweet regularly. Get people in the habit of seeing your content. The more often you tweet, the more your content will be exposed to people. On Twitter, it’s very hard to tweet too often.

DON’Ts: It is difficult to read tweets that include more than 2 hashtags. Don’t add a hashtag just for the sake of including one.

DON’Ts: Avoid sending only tweets with a link. Twitter is not a bookmarking site, but a great tool to start a conversation.

If you are new to social media and need guidance to create a Twitter account, here’s how to do it:

 

Step 1: Create a New Account

 

To create a new account, go to http://www.Twitter.com. Fill out the new account form.

1-Create-Account

Step 2: Startup Wizard

 

Go through the startup wizard if it’s your first time using Twitter. You’ll be invited to add people based on categories.

2-Startup-Wizard

You’ll also be invited to search for and add contacts based on your email.

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Use the categories feature and the search contacts feature to populate your initial follow list.

Step 3: Posting New Tweets

 

To post a Tweet to anyone who’s following you, type your message into the box on the left. Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters. This will be sent out to all your followers.

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Step 4: See Who’s Talking to You

 

When someone wants to talk to you on Twitter, what they do is use a mention. They do this by putting the @ symbol in front of your name. For example, if your username was Jacob123, they would tweet something and put @Jacob123 in the beginning.

To see who’s been talking about you with this feature, just go to @ Connect along the top.

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Note: If you and another tweeter are mutually following one another, you can communicate with direct messages. Otherwise, you have to use @ connects.

Step 5: Discover More People to Follow

 

To discover more people to follow, just click “Discover” along the top navigation bar. You can browse by category, by stories, by level of activity, by recommendations and by finding friends.

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Step 6: Using the Feed

 

Once you’ve followed a handful of people, you’ll be able to see their tweets in your feed. To reply to a tweet, retweet a tweet or favorite a tweet, just hover your mouse over the tweet and click the corresponding button.

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