How can my business use Twitter?

First things first

Username: If you’re a start‐up business put some thought into the username you chose when creating your twitter account. Starting with a username that mentions what you do will make you more easily searchable e.g. ‘a_dozen_eggs_graphics’ or ‘designadozeneggs’

Profile

Does your profile reflect your brand? Make sure you make the most of your twitter background and profile picture ‐ think about the design of your page, use your brand logo and incorporate your brand colours to personalise it as much as possible. Ensure that you have a full profile and remember to display your external URL – so a Facebook page, blog or website.

Top Tip

When displaying your web URL don’t use www. – it uses up valuable space within your 160 character bio and twitter automatically shortens ‘likes’ longer than 20 characters.

Bio

Ensure your bio ticks as many SEO boxes as possible! Make sure every word in the 160 characters is useful – and remember that if you title your profile image with a keyword this will also increase your online visibility.

Include your full location on your profile (e.g. Loughborough, East Midlands) – sometimes tweeters like to keep it local.

If you have a business account make sure you mention the names of the people running the account in the bio. Twitter users want to engage with people that are authentic.

As you get going …

Be helpful! If you are an expert in an area, be unselfish with your distribution of advice. A ratio that seems to work well for businesses is 90% unselfish, 10% promotional tweeting.

See Twitter as an extension of offline conversations – you can agree, and disagree, make your opinions known and get involved in heated conversations and debates – just remember to be polite.

Becoming an expert

Introduce people to one another, it’s a great way to build a network quickly and others will repay the compliment, e.g. web designer meet graphic‐designer you may wish to collaborate!

Find experts, and follow who they are following – you will get tips, and insider information about your market. Remember to ask questions, and then credit people who help you.

Connect to the journalists that could profile you. Twitter is a great resource for research – journalists can find sources quickly and businesses can learn about their market. Every Monday night journalists use the #journchat hashtag to share news – interesting to tune in!

So little time …

Get Twitter on your mobile – it will feel less like a chore and more of an extension of life! Set up auto tweets – use twitterfeed.com to set up a twitter feed from your blog posts. You can always schedule tweets – using a programme such as TweetDeck, but make sure you still tweet spontaneously; you want to ensure your account is still injected with personality.

Other hints and tips

Take backstage photos of your business, and keep your customers updated with ‘work in progress’ tweets and photographs.

Twitter search is one of the most powerful tools available to us. Think about what your business or service offers and use it to search for potential clients. For example, if you specialise in graphic design try using the search terms ‘I need a logo‘ or ‘looking for a graphic designer’ and see what pops up. You could get some new custom with just a few quick searches!

Do you want to know how many people engage with your tweets? Use a link shortener for all your links. Automatically every link will be tracked. Bit.ly, tinyurl.com and is.gd are the most popular.

Add your business to Twellow – the yellow pages of Twitter! This will be another way to drive traffic to your website.

Following and followers

Keep your tweet short if you want to be retweeted – you will need to leave space for ‘RT + @their_username’ and of course, make sure you say something interesting! This is perhaps the most effective way to gain more followers.

Be selective in who you follow – potential followers will notice who you follow, and will judge you for it! The followers/following balance is spoken about as the optimal place to be within twitter. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, but a great tool to find the people that don’t follow you back is friendorfollow.com. Perhaps then say a quick hello – just to ensure they haven’t forgotten all about you!

Why might people stop following you?

• Too many posts
• Unrelenting marketing spam
• You are just rude!
• No interaction

Twitter Glossary

If it all seems a bit much, or you don’t know your DM’s from your @’s then have a look at this twitter glossary!

Good luck and do let us know how you get on!

Follow us at @a_dozen_eggs for more hints and tips.