4/6/2010
How to Get Your Business Started on Twitter
Whether you are a B2B or B2C firm, it makes sense to set up a corporate Twitter account. On Twitter, you can -
How to Set Up Your Company Twitter Account
- Connect with customers
- Find new customers
- Provide customer service
- Gather market information
- Promote your brand
- Advertise special offers and programs
- Share news and information
All this communication leads directly to greater market awareness, stronger customer relationships, more qualified traffic to your Web site, better leads, and improved sales. But how to get started on Twitter? Here are the basics.
Open Your Twitter Account and Set Up Your Profile
- User Name – Whatever you use becomes your Twitter ID URL. It’s not a field of information you’ll want to change. You’ll find this field on your Account page.
- Name – This is the name that appears in your profile, and it can be changed. You’ll find it on your Settings page.These two are important fields that merit careful attention beforehand. Branding, keyword optimization for SEO, and providing clarity to new Twitter connections are all important considerations.
- E-mail – Also found on your Account page. This e-mail account will receive a lot of automated and personal messages, so make sure the recipient can handle the volume and respond (when necessary) in a timely fashion.
- Location – Found on your Profile page. People on Twitter frequently search for new connections geographically, so again, think about optimization and clarity.
- Web Address – The page you want your Twitter profile to link to. People who discover your Twitter profile often click through on this link, so it should be chosen with care. More on this in a minute.
- Bio – Here’s where you convey your brand message and describe what you do. This field is also searchable, so I usually recommend inserting as many of your important keyword phrases as possible.
Create a Custom, Powerhouse Twitter Background Design
In the Design section of your Twitter Settings, you can upload a custom background that will appear on your Twitter Home page and Profile page. These pages get tons of traffic, so don’t pass up the opportunity to present a strong branding message and communicate other vital information. At Straight North, we’ve truly elevated these background designs to an art form, and it’s a great use of designer skill if you ask me. Twitter profiles can make you or break you. If the design sucks or look like everyone else’s, people will be disinclined to follow you or click through to your site.
Set Up a Twitter Landing Page on Your Web Site
The page you link to from your Twitter profile could be your Home page, your About page, or a specific Service page. More and more, I’m coming around to the idea that firms must create customized pages specifically designed to welcome and orient visitors originating from Twitter. Here’s a page where you can describe your firm’s approach to Twitter and social media, provide bio information on your main Tweeter(s), and display links to other employees who actively tweet on their own Twitter accounts. In addition, you can include a call to action specifically geared to the Twitter community.
Start Tweeting, Establish Your Base
Before you start following a bunch of people (we’ll talk about how you do that next), publish a number of Tweets. By now you will have developed a specific Twitter communication strategy, which will include a few or more different message styles. So put some messages out there, so when new potential followers come to your Home page, they see activity. Most often, if a person sees only a handful of tweets, it’s a turnoff.
Reach Out and Follow People
Lots of ways to do this. I like Twellow, which is sort of like a Yellow Pages for Twitter. You can search for people a variety of ways, including geographically, by industry, and by interest. Search is easy, and once you register, following is a matter of one click.
Another easy approach is to use Twitter’s Find People internal search engine. It’s easy to use.
Twitter Lists, which you may spot on other Twitter profiles, are excellent sources of targeting people to follow. Users compile their own Lists based on whatever criteria they choose. Again, those criteria often revolve around interest, industry, or geography.
However you go about building followers, go slowly. A big imbalance between your number of followers and the number of people you’re following is another warning bell. Also, if you follow too many people at a time, Twitter may limit your activity. Learn more about Twitter Limits for Updates, API, Direct Messages, and Following.
Use a Grade A Twitter Interface
Most serious Twitter users don’t work directly in Twitter.com. Instead, they make use of an interface that allows them to categorize followers, segregate Direct (one-to-one, private) Messages, track tweets in which they are mentioned, track conversations in the Twittersphere based on keywords, and a number of other things. My favorite interface is HootSuite, which is Web-based. Another popular tool is TweetDeck, which like HootSuite is very powerful and customizable.
Over to You
There you have it. With all this taken care of, you’re ready to start tweeting on a regular basis and build your Twitter community. What other tips for getting started on Twitter have you found to be important?
Learn more about Straight North Social Network Marketing Services
9 Responses to How to Get Your Business Started on Twitter
Great overview on how to get started, Brad. Here are a few more:
- expect 30-40% of people you follow, that you don’t know, to follow you back. Expect it to be higher for people you already know.
- keep the “following” maybe 10% more than the followers. If it’s more, people think that if others are not following you back, you’re not worth following. If it’s less, people think you aren’t reciprocating with this valuable social capital.
- manage your “following”. If someone does not follow you back within, say, 72 hours, then unfollow them. This is how to keep the balance between following and followers.
- keep it to no more than 2-4 tweets per day. Enough to be noticed, minimal enough not to be a spamming pest.
- please, no “I’m sitting on the patio….”
- in addition to a landing page on your website, you’ll need active content, or the second time someone follows your Twitter call to action, there is nothing new. This can be a frequently updated blog, a special offer, a link to a news story.
Maybe someday I will get around to creating a website, blog, and Twitter account for my new consulting business…
Best,
Dave
Hi Dave – Great to hear from you. Best of luck with your new venture – there’s no doubt you have enormous value to share. Your Twitter tips are spot on, although I’d leave a lot more wiggle room on the number of tweets per day. Lately I’ve been erratic in volume – no tweets on some days and a ton on others. That’s probably bad, so thanks for the reminder!
Brad,
One way to manage the volume is to write all your tweets for the week in one sitting. Then if something comes up during the week, you can always create one on the spot, and still have a backlog. You’ll always have some new tweets to share, even if your brain is not working that day. I think some of the Tweet management sites that you mentioned will let you add your tweets, and then let you individually schedule when they are broadcast.
Of course another advantage to writing them all at once is to have better management of the content, to make sure it is line with your Twitter strategy. For example, of 25 tweets for the upcoming week, 3 will be to drive folks to your blog update, 3 will retweet relevant tweets from others, 2 will point to book review, 1 will offer a discount, etc.
DB
Absolutely. HootSuite makes pre-entering tweets easy. We do that for clients now, but I seldom take the time to do it for my own tweets. Besides evening out the tweet volume, pre-scheduling is helpful if you’re up at 3am tweeting and your audience is on Twitter at, say, 2pm.
Hi Brad, great suggestions! I’ve been using Co-Tweet to manage client twitter accounts but have also used HootSuite and Tweetdeck. I also think companies should give themselves permission to fail, it’s part of the process. I read and hear lots of do’s and dont’s but what works for some does not work for others. For example, in my personal community, people hate auto-DMs but in some of my client communities its SOP and no one minds. You’ll drive yourself nuts trying to learn all the “rules” and please everyone, have a playbook before you begin, but be flexible enough to adjust as needed.
Karen, Good points as usual … trial and error is essential on Twitter. Look how much the platform has changed in the relatively short time we’ve been using it. I’ll bet certain things that worked for you 18 months ago don’t work today. DMs might be an example. A rapidly evolving medium.
I keep switching back and forth between Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. Now that Twitter has lists built in it’s pretty simple to switch. Lately I’ve noticed Hootsuite seems to run into busy signals from Twitter more often than I would like. Has that been a problem for you?
Fred, HootSuite is working for me more reliably now than a couple months ago. I’m not sure if the service interruptions are Twitter problems or HS problems, but I’d run into the same thing with TweetDeck.
This is really helpful information on how to up keep a twitter account. I have realised that there is a lot of time that you need to invest into twitter to keep people coming back and interested, otherwise you don’t get the following that you hoped for. i have never used either Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, so I will be giving them a try. I am also going to give Dave’s guidelines a go. I think that they are manageable and good direction for someone who is starting up on twitter.
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