How to use Twitter for Business. Part 3.
Jan 2, 2010
Step 3. Start Tweeting.
It’s important to get a few tweets out straight away. It will help people you follow to decide whether or not to follow you back. Start with a personal tweet about yourself and what people are going to find in your tweets.
As an example my first tweet was:
This is the new Twitter account for CaptainSEO. Please follow me for daily SEO tips and advice.
Typical types of tweet are:
- An observation: Tweet about what you’re doing, thinking or feeling
- What you’re reading: Post a link to an interesting blog post or news article
- What you’re watching: Post a link to a cool video from Hulu or YouTube
- What events you’re going to: Share a link to the next conference you plan to attend
- Promote your content: Post a link to your most recent company or personal blog article
- Promote someone else’s content: Post a link to someone else’s blog article as a helpful resource
- Chat with someone: Send messages using an @ sign (to be explained later)
- Retweet what someone else has said: Retweet (using RT or Retweet in the beginning of the message) to repeat what someone else has said
How about this for your first tweet?
I am reading How to use Twitter for Business by CaptainSEO. Read it here. It’s great. http://alturl.com/jj22
Remember, your first tweets will be public so don’t say anything that will come back to bite you. Remember the story in part 2?
Step 4. Find people to follow.
When you log in to Twitter, from your homepage, click on “find people” and you will find various options here, so have an explore.
Other ways to find people to follow are:
- Collect Twitter names at conferences and events
- Ask your business associates whether they use twitter
- Use online directories such as Twellow and Twollow
- See if your favourite bloggers are using Twitter
- See if your newspaper is using Twitter
- Follow people who follow you
A word to the wise. Don’t follow too many people at once. Stick to about 50 new follows per day. It will take a couple of days for people to follow you back. It is important for your credability that you are not following 200o with only a few following you.
Don’t be tempted to use automated tools to follow and unfollow people. This is known as churn and can result in your account becoming suspended.
Step 5. Get people to follow you
Following people and getting to read their updates is one thing, but you need people to be following you so that you may engage with them and have conversations.
Make your Twitter name easy to find by:
- Adding it to your email signature
- Making it prominent on your website
- Adding it to your business card. I think it is important enough to fill the entire reverse of mine.
Make people want to follow you by offering titbits of your knowledge and join in conversations about things you know about. Check your twitter stream to see what people you follow are talking about and offer advice, support, encouragement etc.
Step 6. Engage with your followers.
It is important to knows how to message somebody else. You can do this publicly or privately.
To do this publicly, known as tagging, you start your message with the @ sign and their username. For example, if you wanted to tag or message me you would construct your tweet thus:
@CaptainSEO Can you help me with some SEO please?
I would be able to see this if I am monitoring my Twitter stream, but if not, I can find it on my Twitter homepage where it says “@ Replies”.
If you wanted to message me privately, yo would start your tweet with D then the username. If you wanted top send me a private message, you would construct your tweet thus:
D CaptainSEO Would you like to meet for dinner tonight?
This message would not be found in the Twitter stream. I would find it on my homepage where it says “Direct Messages”.
Now you have the basic skills and tools required to use Twitter, the next instalment of this blog, will show you how to use these new skills for business.
Stay tuned.
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