Summary: Wanting to use Twitter for your business/website, but not sure where to start? After reading this article, you will be all clued up about twitter, tweeting, re-tweeting and you will wonder why you didn’t start before.
Wondering what this twitter, tweeting, retweeting business is all about? Here is your tweeting guide to Twitter. During this guide, I will walk you through how to set up a business account and building your followers to spread your business message.
Twitter making connections
Every day, millions of people use Twitter. They create and share ideas, images, news and opinions with each other. Now even businesses are using Twitter to spread their message and share their information. Everyone is using Twitter, from your best mate wanting to share her weekend images from the latest festival, to local ice cream stalls, from national companies to international brands. Twitter is connecting people across the world enabling them to share their message more than ever before.
Twitter history
Looking at a brief history of Twitter, Twitter was first known as Twttr way back in 2006. Twitter began as a simple SMS-text service and has grown to what it is today in only a few short years. Today, there are more than 110 million users worldwide who carry out more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day. It has been reported that 75% of users access their Twitter accounts via third party applications - examples include Tweetie for iPhone and TweetDeck which works on computers and the iPhone. Today, more than a third of users access their accounts by mobile phone. Allowing access from third party applications and devices has helped increase Twitter’s traffic because users no longer have to be at a computer to access their accounts and spread their news.
Twitter for business
Twitter is a communication platform. It enables businesses to communicate with their customers directly. It enables businesses to share information quickly with customers who want to know what the company is up to. Twitter enables businesses to build and maintain relationships with customers and create a community where they can both share information and learn from what customers have to say about them.
From a user’s prospective Twitter means you can connect direct with the company in question and tell them about your experiences of their company/products/services whether good or bad. You can also learn about the Company, their products and offers.
Twitter also enables you to follow the conversation of others who are tweeting about your own Company/products/services. This means you can see what is being said about you or your market sector. This therefore means you can gain information, helping you, for example, to find a gap in the market or an idea for further development/improvements to your current range.
Twitter for personal users
You maybe asking, why do I need to be on Twitter? First and foremost, you can get a lot from Twitter. It is a great way to get news/information from all your favorite websites/tv shows and even celebrities all in one place. You would be surprised who you find on Twitter: everyone from television personality Johnathan Ross aka @wossy to Tour da France Legend Lance Armstrong @lancearmstrong, along with tweets from 10 Downing Street and the Prime Minster @number10gov and popstar Lady Gaga @ladygaga. Twitter users typically grow by 300,000 per day so even if your favorite music or sports star isn’t tweeting now, it will not be long before they get the twitter bug, so the number of people you follow will increase over time. This further increases with Twitter’s new follower suggestions of who to follow – where Twitter suggests fellow users to follow based on who you already follow.
Using Twitter
First things first, signing up – if you already have a twitter account go to the next stage (‘Twitter Speak’).
Signing up
If you’re a twitter newbie , jump in and get started - go to www.twitter.com and click on sign up, and this will then take you to a page where you will see four boxes – full name, username, password and email. If you are setting up a company account, put the company name in both the full name and username boxes. ‘Username’ is the name you will be known as on twitter so this will promote your company on Twitter. After completing the four boxes, hit ‘create my account’ and your Twitter journey will begin.
Now you have your Twitter account, what you first see isn’t very exciting, but don’t be put off by this. The next stage is to start building your profile. You do this by completing your company information. To start adding your company information go to settings (top, right of your Twitter page). From there you will be able to add a profile picture, which in the case of a company could be a company logo, information about the company, bio, location, website etc. Remember all this information is how your customers identify you so use the information they are used to be seeing on your website, in your stores and so on.
Tip - If you have key staff members with accounts as well you can add them at the bottom of your company bio. e.g. @AngelSEO is the company account but MD and SEO expert Dave Cain can be found @SEODaveCain, usability and SEO expert Sharon Saxton can be found @SharonAngelSEO and myself, Zoe Short, Social Media Socialite can be found at @ZoeAngelSEO (come say hello to us!)
You can also change your background layout to match company colours – again this helps your customers identify your company is really you and not just somebody pretending to be you (if you find someone is using your business name falsely, inform Twitter’s administrators – they don’t like people having false profiles so will happily sort it out for you).
Twitter speak
As you will soon learn, Twitter has its own language and you will pick this up really quickly. I have include the main terms and what they mean to help you during your first steps on the Twitter treadmill.
Tweet
When a message is placed on twitter it is know as a tweet. Tweets can be a maximum of 140 characters, the length of a typical sentence.
When you want to tweet to someone you type @ and their twitter name (example @twittername or @AngelSEO) and then type your message. This means your message will appear in their @twittername section and your other followers will see that you have sent them a message if they view your profile or if they follow you both.
Example of a tweet sent to me
When posting links you may need to uses a shortening URL service like bit.ly . Bit.ly enables you to shorten and share you links. Bit.ly turns this link - http://www.angelseo.co.uk/seo/beginners/facebook-v-twitter-which-is-better-for-business/ – into this http://bit.ly/bcsHi7. Which as you can see is a lot shorter making it possible to post it on Twitter without exceeding the 140 character limit.
Example of a tweet with a shortened link:
Retweet or RT
A Retweet is created when a Twitter user chooses to forward a tweet from one of the Twitter users they follow, when it is forwarded it becomes a retweet. A retweet is also called retweeting, retweeted. A re-tweet is when you send a tweet from another user to your followers.
When a message has been retweeted it shown with the retweet symbol. The symbol is the two little arrows before the message starts, as can be seen in the example below.
Direct message or DM
Direct messages are private messages on Twitter. Only the user of the @twittername account can see direct messages. To send a direct message you need to need to click on direct messages and then either type in the @twittername you wish to send a direct message to, or select the name from the drop down list (see image below) and then type your message and cick send, this message will then appear in your sent box which can be found just below the text box that you write your direct message in.
Hashtag
Moving on to Hashtaging (hashtag). Due to Twitter not having an easy way to group or categorise tweets, web savvy Twitter users came up with their own way and it is simple and easy meaning any user, novice or expert can do it. If you want to tag/categorise a tweet simple hashtag (#) and then write the letters or word you wish to tag. Examples would be #SEO #SocialMedia #Twitter
Here are some examples…
Example 1: hashtag during a sentence:
Example 2: hashtag after a sentence: (this is also a retweet as you can see from the arrow icon)
As you will notice from the images, people tag during sentences or at the end depending on what they have written. Try both out and see what works for you.
Trending topics
Trending topics are the hot topics on Twitter at that moment in time – they are changing all the time depending on what people are discussing and tweeting about. Topics appear in the trending section by having a name/place/tv show tweeting about by thousands if not millions of users at the same time. Topics appear by having the same thing, e.g. SEO, spoken about in messages or by hashtagging SEO i.e. #SEO.
As you can see from the image here, you will notice that things with hashtags do appear in the trending list. As you can see, the hot trending topic when I was producing this post was British Professor Stephen Hawking.
Twitter errors
Some things you may experience from time to time when using Twitter are Twitter error pages, the infamous fail whale and the robot.
Fail whale – You see fail whale when twitter is not available or is over capacity.
Robot – You see the twitter robot when something is not working or a technical error has occurred.
Following
Find relevant people to follow – also bear in mind who you would like to follow you back and engage with. Remember, you are also trying to create a community.
Some ideas of who you may want to start following include industry professionals, companies and professional magazines, to name a few.
Getting followers
Let’s look at how to go about getting followers – the right kind of followers. You may get some followers because you already follow them (some users follow whoever follows them). Some places to start looking for followers and getting your name known would be:
- Industry bodies
- Professional groups
- Well known professionals
- Industry magazines.
Some things to do to increase your followers:
- Have a link to your Twitter page on your website
- Point your followers/friends on other social networks to your Twitter page
- Have a link at the bottom of your email signature to your Twitter page
- Have a direct link in your email promotions/newsletters to your Twitter page
- Tweet regulary - daily would be good. This also engages your followers.
- Have your Twitter feed on your company blogs
- If you are a well known brand, get your account verified by the Twitter developers – this will show people who search for your business that you are the real business and not a fake account using your business’s name
- Post links to great articles – produced by yourself or other industry professionals
- Inform your followers of what is happening at the Company, e.g. new products/services/staff
- Encourage engagement with followers – ask their opinions/views
Once you have followers, you need to keep them – yes Twitter users can be very fickle. If you don’t actively tweet for a day, some of them will unfollow you – yes really! When you are deciding what to tweet about, make sure it is relevant to your target audience, market sector or interest.
…and finally…
Remember the reason you want to create a Twitter account – it maybe because you want to spread your message, connect with your customers more, etc. Bear in mind your reasons why, when you are looking for followers and following other users.
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4 Responses to “A tweeting guide to Twitter for businesses”
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said at 1:23 pm on September 14th, 2010
[...] Keep hearing about Twitter, tweeting and retweeting and want to know what all the fuss is about? Really want to have a go at using Twitter?, but not sure where to start. A great way to start is by reading A tweeting guide to Twitter. [...]
said at 2:14 pm on October 2nd, 2010
The only thing that gets me about Twitter, is that you can legitimately ask questions and not get a single response. Meaning, I have 1700+ followers but I can ask recommendations about buying a new laptop, buying a car, making a new homebrew, seeing a movie, etc… and even though these tweets are made to 1700+ followers, no response is received. And yes, I do respond to other tweets.
said at 9:30 am on October 4th, 2010
@Paul T – having used twitter for 3 years, I have found the same problem, but a lot of this is down to the quality of your followers, like any website on the net, you will always get spammy accounts.
My advice would be to start talking to people in your niche and/or talk to people interested in your products. Also show via your twitter account you are real, talk about daily activities, funny stories or share feedback you may have received.
said at 2:57 pm on October 29th, 2010
[...] Read the original: A tweeting guide to Twitter for businesses | SEO Knowledge Base [...]