Guide to Establishing Your Business on Twitter

The most obvious business use of Twitter is to connect and meet potential customers the same way you would at a networking event or tradeshow, then share information (content) that pertains to their interest in getting to know, like and trust you and your company’s products and services.

So let‘s get started with Twitter!

The first thing you‘ll need to do is register a twitter account.

Register a Twitter Account

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to go ahead and set up a company account (not a personal account), for the purposes of:

• Keeping your customer base up-to-date on your company events
• Promote recent blog articles or news items
• Update consumers about your products and services
• Give real-time updates at conferences and events
• Offer additional layers of customer service and support

Clicking this button will bring you to a page where you will select your username and password.

Your username is very important. This name will be how people refer to you on Twitter and potentially how people will acknowledge you if you ever meet any of your Twitter followers offline. Think of your username as your personal brand name. It’s that important.

For example, if you’re a gifts and rewards company, than you might want to choose something along the lines of:

• #GiftsandRewards
• #GiftRewards
• #SydneyGifts
• #CorporateGifts
• #CorporateGiftsAu

Or, you could just use your campany name. #YourCompany

Keep in mind you only have 15 characters to work with.

Some things to avoid when creating your twitter username:

• Avoid using numbers (Company123). Unless there is a reason for the specific numbers.
• Avoid using underscores (Company_AU). Using an underscore won‘t hurt you, but it doesn’t look professional.

After you choose your username, click “Create my account”. This will launch a screen that gives you the option of choosing people to follow based on your topics of interest.

I recommend that you complete your profile design and details, make a few tweets, and then start following people. So just skip this step for now. You can always come back to this once you’re ready to start connecting.

Twitter will now ask you to check if any of your email contacts are currently using Twitter. Again, I recommend that you wait until you’ve set up your profile entirely before connecting with people you already know. You can come back to this step once you’re ready to start connecting.

Build & Brand Your Profile

Now that you have your account, you need to brand your twitter page with your company details, logo or desired image graphic, and a background image (if preferred).

It’s important that you brand your profile before you begin interacting with and following people.

Before you add your company information, your account will look inactive, and if you start following people without a personalized profile, your chances of being followed back will decrease dramatically, obviously!

So let’s go ahead and brand your profile.

Click on the “edit your profile” link as shown:

Then fully complete all details, including your company bio, your web URL, your primary location, your company name, and your profile logo (otherwise known as your Avatar).

Quick tip regarding your Bio section, be as descriptive as possible in as few words as possible describing what your product or service is and the benefit to me (your customer). OR, a short elevator pitch to convince me (your customer) why I should follow you?

Next, click the “Account” tab within your profile settings, as shown:

Here you can alter your username, account email, language, timezone, tweet location, tweet media and privacy etc.

If you happen to click the “tweet privacy” checkbox, this will privatise your twitter stream and no one will be able to see your updates without following you first.

I don’t recommend checking this box to protect your updates unless you’re creating a private company profile strictly for customer service. And even then, you might not want to privatise.

People judge whether to follow someone or not by the value that your updates offer, so I recommend keeping your tweets public to avoid people simply clicking away.

Customise Your Twitter Background

As a business that wants to use Twitter to drive revenue, you have to take your presence to the next level. While anyone can quickly set up a free account, few take the time to customize that account.

Customizing the actual background of your Twitter profile is a great way of boosting your credibility and educating new and potential followers to the content and products your business provides.

When customizing your Twitter background, you will need to have some design skills (its pretty simple if you don’t mind getting involved with Adobe photoshop or illustrator). Otherwise, you must be willing to pay a designer to help with the project to get the look and feel your company deserves.

A good idea is to do a couple searchers for similar companies who have customized their twitter background, just to get a few ideas for the type of things people are doing in your industry.

Here are a few tips for designing your twitter background:

• Decide what you are trying to communicate to people on Twitter. While you understand your prospects and customers, it is important to note that Twitter might be the first place that many new prospects discover your business. In your background, make sure to communicate information that appeals to prospects who are extremely new in the buying cycle.
• Be aware of the Twitter Toolbar element of your twitter page. Be sure to leave head-room for the toolbar.
• Take advantage of prime real estate. The left-hand side of the Twitter profile for example is the best place for a company logo, company description, or important links that you want to share. However, it‘s important to note the dimensions of the left- and right-hand columns are fluid and change with the size of the user‘s browser window – in which case, try to design your background image for smaller monitor sizes, and you will cater for all screen types by doing so. Designing for larger size monitors might result in elements of your background being cut off on some users‘ screens.
• Background images should be one image (not tiled). Tiled backgrounds just aren’t professional and they often don’t handle the transitions from the columns on the page as well.

Once your image has been designed, you can visit your Twitter account settings under the “Design” tab on this page here: http://twitter.com/settings/profile. You will notice a button down the page to your left called “change background image”. This will enable you to upload your new image to your account.

If you prefer to stay clear of Photoshop, Themeleon has some great Twitter themes for customisation, or you can contact me for advice on custom twitter designs.

Begin Tweeting

Before you start finding people to follow, we recommend tweeting a few times to give potential new followers an idea of the type of content you will be sharing.

Your most valuable asset is the information you provide, and it will often be the deciding factor for whether another user decides to follow you back.

Some of the things you can tweet about may include:

• Tweet about what you‘ve recently observed in your industry. Give your opinion or insight into a particular topic.
• Post links to videos, articles, white papers or press releases that your company has recently produced.
• Tweet About Events You’re Attending, Promoting or Participating in.
• Post a link to your most recent company article or blog post.
• Post a link to someone else‘s article (an employee, or customer’s article maybe?) as a helpful resource or insight into your industry.
• Direct message to other Twitter users using an @ sign. More on this down the page.
• Retweet (using ‗RT‘ or ‗Retweet‘ at the beginning of the message or by clicking Twitter‘s Retweet button) to repeat to your followers what another user has tweeted.
• Start a discussion by asking your audience their opinion on something relating to your industry, product or service (or just something completely random)
• Give occasional product and service updates
• Cross promote: Encourage people to join discussions on your Facebook Page.

The important thing here is to be creative, and to offer high value content that truly helps your potential customers, while building trust in you and your brand.

If you can give away a ton of great content and information that’s current, relevant, and informative – your chances of getting people to know, like and trust will be dramatically improved.

You can’t guide someone down a sales funnel until you’ve achieved this first with your audience.

So go ahead and make your first couple of tweets to get the ball rolling. But keep in mind, don‘t say anything you wouldn‘t say at a networking event.

Search for Relevant People to Follow

Building your network is the most challenging and time-consuming part of using Twitter. Expanding your network doesn‘t happen immediately; you need to commit the time and energy to use this tool effectively.

By following people, you will be able to view their updates in your Twitter stream. This is your chance to learn more about them: their lives, the blog posts they are reading, the types of links they like to share, the people with whom they interact. And the products or services that they like to buy.

Where can you find ideal people to follow?

It’s simple, use the “Who to Follow” feature provided by Twitter which you can access by clicking the link in your Twitter toolbar (shown below).

Here you can choose a few of Twitter‘s highlighted topics or search using your own keywords in the search box above to find and start following interesting people relevant to your business and industry.

You can also use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) which is a free twitter search engine that helps you find people who are tweeting about specific topics (keywords). For example, you can find people who have recently tweeted about “Social Media” and then follow the people who are currently talking about the topics related to your business.

You can also use Twitter Search to see who has tweeted about your company.

Another good strategy is to Follow the people that are following your Followers. Once you begin receiving updates from a handful of people, watch to see whom those people chat with by looking at @replies. Quite often it will make sense to follow that person as well as people congregate around people they like or are interested in and talking about the same things they’re talking about.

Collect People’s Twitter Names at Events: Like we said before, many social media-savvy people will include their Twitter handle on their nametag at an event. Be sure to write down their usernames and follow them later. You can locate their Twitter account by replacing their username in the following URL: http://twitter.com/USERNAME

For example, if someone tells you to ―follow @MobileSocialSEO, you can type http://twitter.com/MobileSocialSEO in your browser‘s navigation bar to find us. If you are not sure if someone you just met is on Twitter, ask them!

Finally, be sure to follow hashtags (#) at events.

Many event organizers will establish and publicize a specific ”hashtag” (#) that they have created specifically for that particular event (example: #event123) so that people attending can follow all the discussions relating to the event on twitter.

Here you can use Search.Twitter.com to follow tweets using the hashtag of a particular event, and then follow the people who are attending the same event as you who you may not have met in person.

This is a very powerful way of making great close nit connections with your community on twitter through local events.

Quick Note: Don’t follow too many people at once (no more than 50-100 people a day) because there will be a time gap between following people and when they follow you back. If your profile says you are following 2,000 people and only 30 followers have followed you back so far, it appears that 1,970 of the people you followed chose not to follow you back. This unfavorable ratio won‘t help boost your credibility and may negatively affect people‘s decisions to follow you, or worse, get your twitter account banned.

Be sure to give your followers some time to follow you back before finding a new batch of people to add to your network.

Attract People to Follow You

Following people and viewing their tweets is great, but in order to have valuable two-way conversations, you want people to follow you back and view your tweets too. This is why it‘s so important to get your profile fully set up before reaching out for new connections. If you follow someone who doesn‘t already know you, you need to display sufficient information about your company in your profile so he or she can make an informed decision of whether to follow you back.

Attracting followers is important because they will serve as your network who will view your tweets and share with others to attract more interest and followers.

Here are several tips to attracting new followers.

Add “Follow” buttons to your blog and web pages.

Make it easy for people to find out if your company has a Twitter account.

Visitors to your blog and website might like your content and will want to know how they can subscribe to your tweets. So be sure to add Twitter follow buttons to your site so people can easily find you.

Tweet useful resources and information that people need.

People will want to follow you if they think they will get value from your tweets, so avoid making your Twitter account a purely promotional tool.

Would you subscribe to a newsletter if it didn‘t offer anything of value?

What specialty knowledge do you have that you can share and give away for free?

Make it easy for people to find your Twitter username(s).

Create a web page that lists all the Twitter handles of the people in your company. By giving your customers an easy way to interact with individual people, it helps them get to know the type of people who work at your company. It also gives them insight into your brand!

Interact with the people you follow (who haven’t yet followed you back). 

Keep an eye on your Twitter stream and comment on what other people are saying. Give feedback and compliment people where appropriate. The key is to engage. This will give them incentive to follow you back.

Connect and Engage

This involves tweeting to specific individuals by sending a direct message to another person on Twitter.

The way you do this is by using an @ before the person‘s username anywhere within the tweet.

Remember that this type of message is still public or viewable by anyone, even if they don‘t have a Twitter account.

Keep in mind, to make your tweets as visible as possible, avoid putting @username in the very beginning of your tweets. Adding the @username to the very beginning will make your tweet viewable only in the Twitter streams of people who follow you and the user to whom you‘re tweeting.

Here is an example of how you would send a tweet to myself.

Example: Hello to the team at @MobileSocialSEO! (viewable to everyone). Whereas, @MobileSocialSEO how are you? would only be viewable in Twitter streams of users who follow you and who also follow @MobileSocialSEO.

By putting @username within your tweet, Twitter will know who to send it to.

This type of tweet is also called a reply or @reply.

All of the @replies you receive will go into your @Mentions tab.

Please also note that anytime you put an @ in front of someone‘s username, it automatically becomes a link to that person‘s profile. This feature makes it easy for you to easily visit those particular users‘ profiles and engage with them as well.

Direct Messaging

As you are probably aware, it’s also possible to send someone a private message on Twitter. This is called a direct message or “DM”.

You can send a direct message by either visiting a particular person‘s profile and clicking the “message” link on the right hand side of the user‘s profile or by beginning your tweet with D Username and then including your message.

And example would be: D MobileSocialSEO Do you want to meet tomorrow?

This will communicate a private message toMobileSocialSEO that won‘t be viewable in the public Twitter stream.

Keep in mind, you can only DM people if you follow them and they follow you back, and you‘re still only allowed 140 characters per message.

So there you go, a simple guide to establishing and marketing your business on Twitter.

If you have any comments to add or questions relating to this guide, please comment in the box below and I will personally respond to all.