How to use Twitter for Business. Part 2.

Jan 1, 2010

Setting up your profile correctly.

Step 1. Sign up for Twitter

Before you set up your account, you will have to have a little think about your strategy. Whether you want to set up as a company or an individual. You could of course sign up for one of each. There are currently no limits to how many accounts you can have, but it is good practice to use different email addresses. From time to time, Twitter accounts get suspended for “suspicious activity”. This is an algorithmic thing, not human intervention and there is very little you can do about it. If you have more than one account with the same email address, they may all get suspended at the same time.

Personally I have four or five accounts which I use for different purposes. I also manage further accounts for clients.

There are no strict rules between what constitutes a business or personal account, but the basic differences in usage are as follows:

Business account: Represents the company as a whole. Quite often the name of the staff member writing the tweet is added to the end to personalise it.

• Keep your customers informed and up-to-date
• Promote recent blog articles or news items
• Announce new products or services
• Stream updates from conferences / seminars / webinars

Personal account: Can be a member of the company or the sole trader. This type of account is quite often more personal and can contain a lot of non company related chat. Be mindful when you write a tweet though as it is available to the public as a whole.

Now I will walk you through the sign up process.

Firstly, you will need to visit Twitter at www.twitter.com and click the “jon the conversation button.

This will start off the registration process and will load the page where you get to chose your username. Think carefully about your username. It will effectively be your online brand. It’s what other web users will refer to you as.

Some suggestions for username formats are:

• Your full name – KevinHeath
• A variation of your name – KHeath
• A combination of your name and company name – CoastKevin
• A combination of your name and industry – SEOKevin
• A name containing industry keywords – SEOGuru

It is worth noting at this point that the username is not case sensitive. It’s a good idea to use capital letters for each word when written without a dash (or other separator), but if somebody types it in lower case they will still find your page.

Making your Twitter name close to your real name may make it easier for people to put a face to the name when meeting face-to-face, however, it is becoming standard practice to put your Twitter name on your business cards and name badges.

The rear of my business card is taken up fully with my Twitter username and the logo I have chosen to use for my online entity: CaptainSEO

You also get to chose your password and to add your email address to the account. Then, after filling in the Captcha (the anti spam filter where you have to type in the two words), you click on create my account.

Step 2. Personalise your profile

Now that you have your basic account set up, you will need to personalise it. Here you have the opportunity to let people know a little about yourself. It is best to do this before you tweet otherwise you may be mistaken for  a spammer.

To personalise, click on settings in the top navigation. Your profile page will appear for editing.

Work your way through the items in the profile following these tips:

The top field to fill in is “name”. Use your real name when using twitter fro business.
Select a username as above.
Add your email address.
Select your time zone. Not over important, but will make sure you get the correct timestamps on your tweets.
More info URL can be your homepage or a page within your site that you want to draw attention to.
One line bio section needs to be descriptive and concise.
For location, use the format “city, County, Country. This will allow users to find you when carrying out geographical searches.
You don’t need to worry about geotagging just yet. You can always allow this later if need be.
You shouldn’t click the protect my updates when using Twitter for business. It defeats the object of the exercise.

If you have privacy issues with random people reading your tweets, just remember that you, and only you, have control over what is written and therefore published. Don’t tweet anything which my come back to haunt you.

One case comes to mind where a salesman tweeted that he had just turned up in a city and tweeted about what a dump it is. The prospective cutomer took offence and a large order was lost.

Here is the tweet.

Here is the fallout.

Take heed.

Anyway, before I digress too far: back to the tutorial.

After you have filled in your profile, you will need to add a picture, called an avatar. It is best to use a picture that portrays a professional image. Whilst your kids may be the apple of your eye, not many people will want to see a picture of them. Use a nice smiley picture of yourself or your company logo.

If you want to, you can personalise the Twitter account further by selecting “design” from the menu and make a few changes. This can be done at any time so it is not important to do it now if you are short of time.

Herein ends part two. Please come back for more

Twitter: CapatinSEO

Similar Posts:

• How to use Twitter for Business. Part 3.
• How to use Twitter for Business. Part 1.
• How to use Twitter for Business. Part 4.
• Social Media Optimisation SMO Ipswich Suffolk
• Ask an SEO Expert

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