How to Leverage Twitter for Your Business
At first glance, many small business owners have a hard time seeing a use for Twitter. It’s a site that allows you to post only short messages, and it seems like many users are effectively posting random comments. But Twitter can be a very effective tool for your business — and you can use it to market your product or service for free.
Here are some tips for those just starting out:
Getting Started With Twitter
The first step to leveraging Twitter for your business is to set up a Twitter account. You want to pick an account name that is relatively short — it’s preferable to use your company’s name, but an abbreviation can make it easier to communicate effectively on the site. You’ll also want to fill out your bio as completely as possible: link to your website, describe your business and put up a logo or other image.
From the start, you’ll also want to use a few external services to help you keep an eye on who is saying what — unless you want to spend hours a day on the site. Luckily, these tools are free as well.
- TweetDeck: This is an extremely popular desktop application that will let you handle replies, direct messages, search lists, and multiple accounts. There are other desktop applications as well, and using them make Twitter easier to follow and interact.
- TwitterLocal: If your business relies on local buyers or clients, you’ll want to have a good idea of what’s going on in your area. TwitterLocal provides you with a tool to read tweets made in locations you specify. (Relies on Adobe AIR, which is also free).
- SocialOomph: With SocialOomph, you can write posts ahead of time and set them up to automatically post at a time of your choosing, among other things that this service provides.
There are thousands of other free Twitter tools, but deciding which ones can help you requires first deciding just how you want to use Twitter.
Sharing Information on Twitter
Success on Twitter is measured — at least by prospective customers or clients — by your authenticity. As a matter of course, most Twitter users have no interest in following an account that is nothing but links and company announcements. Instead, they’re looking for a little interaction. There’s nothing wrong with including announcements, but you want to respond to comments that other Twitter users make about your business or your industry.
You can jump into a conversation very easily on Twitter, especially if you have set up alerts about topics relevant to your business. If you see that someone is talking about your industry, for instance, take a minute and look at what he has said: agree or disagree, you probably have an opinion about the topic that you would like to share. On Twitter, there’s no need to wait for an invitation — just jump in and start sharing.
The same holds true if someone mentions your product on Twitter. Good or bad, you should acknowledge the mention. If it’s bad, take a moment to see if you can address the issue. If you can fix the situation, you know that you’ve got a satisfied customer who will tell the world about it. The more happy customers you have commenting about how good you are on Twiter, the more potential customers will hear about it. It’s word of mouth marketing taken to a higher level.
Getting Followers of Your Own
There are tools available that you can plug in your Twitter account information and automatically add a thousand contacts on Twitter. However, taking this approach won’t help you in the long run. In a worst case scenario, you can get banned as a spammer. In the best case scenario, most Twitter users will ignore you as just another marketer.
The better option is to grow your Twitter contacts organically. Find someone interested in your business or industry? Start following him — and a put a little extra effort into conversing with him. Get a notification that you’re being followed by someone new? Check out his profile and start a conversation (and follow him back). In just a few months, you’ll have a solid network of Twitter contacts that are actually worth knowing.
Follow Us!
SmallFuel is on Twitter, and so is everyone on the SmallFuel team. Hope to see you there!
Reader Comments
Interesting + useful article.
I like using Twellow as well. Good way of finding relevant and country-specific people.
“most Twitter users have no interest in following an account that is nothing but links and company announcements” - yes, and quite a few brands do this (the best ones don’t) ..) - using Twitter as a kind of RSS tool to hjghlight what they’ve done on their blog, for example. Instead of talking about others, and the odd time, just throwing in something that they’ve done on their blog / in their company etc ..
Yes, Twitter (and other SocMed platforms) CAN be powerful biz tools. That is, IF you actually use them.
I notice that @smallfuel hasn’t tweeted since May, and hasn’t posted to Facebook since April.
Not much “leveraging” going on there.
I signed up for your Marketing Newsletter anyway, but I sure hope it has a better frequency rate.
really useful.. thanks for this…
Hi, thank you for sharing these amazing Twitter tips and resources! I’m currently using them in my own Twitter business accounts. They’re very useful indeed. :)
Great info! Don’t forget to add twitter plugins or widgets to your website….
These things are very nice , thanks for sharing .
Learning how to use Twitter is one thing but learning how to make it work on you is the hole different story..as for me the most effective type of tweet it’s questioning.
And also you have to remember that you have to be followed by more people that you are following, that’s for the popularity index.
Automated twitter following really works.
Twitter is better for personal branding rather than for business. It seeems like Twitter only works well for established businesses that people actually want to follow. Everyone else is just selling something.
using twitter account already but these are the use full tips for business promotion targeting audience
For me Tweeting became interesting when Google announced that social nets begins to play role in website’s pr, so thanks for your tips, very useful.
Twitter is a best source for bookmarking.
With so many social media tools to use, it sometimes becomes overwhelming what to use and how to use them. You’ve done good of simplifying how to use Twitter…thanks.
Well, twitter and facebook is like a vending machine these days. people trying to make money from that two big social networking sites.
Yeah, you were right. But, twitter and facebook also the source of cyber crime these days. remember that.
We haven’t joined Twitter yet but are considering it, seeing as it’s getting impossible to ignore social media! Great tips about SocialOomph and TwitterLocal. SocialOoomph will be particularly useful since we don’t have a lot of time during the day to tweet. Thanks for sharing this!
This posting is loaded with good, concrete tips on how to use Twitter. Picking a short name for your account is something that I did and it does facilitate easier and more effective communication. The use of TweetDeck, TweetLocal and SocialOomph are all great tools, but I like TwitterLocal the best and I think that many small business owners, who haven’t yet tried it, will love it once they give it a chance. As stated in the article if your business depends on local buyers or clients then you want TwitterLocal. Making your Tweets and your interaction on Twitter real and authentic can be a real boost to your business.
We are trying to get our social media campaigns moving for our construction marketing business. It’s tough.
Businesses must begin hiring again. Here is why:
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Learning how to use Twitter is one thing but learning how to make it work on you is the hole different story..as for me the most effective type of tweet it’s questioning.
We are trying to get our social media campaigns moving for our construction marketing business. It’s tough.,
do you actually feel that the impact of social media (twitter and facebook) has the same impact in developing nations like india?
This maybe a little nonrefundable to received, but try to not really depends about it. Try to make it more casual than before plz
That’s not really a really huge statement, but its all I could come up with after reading this.
Twitter is a really useful social media platform for expanding your busines online.
I used to think Twitter was useless, now I really see the value of it.
Very interesting details you have mentioned , thankyou for posting
I have a lot of my own thoughts on the subject
Great explanation of the service for non-users. It would be interesting to elaborate a little more on how small businesses can use it (e.g. setting up RSS feeds for keywords through twitter search). The examples of Whole Foods, Comcast, and Zappos were great.
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今度も宜しくお願いします。
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i love twitter!
Twitter and Facebook are, in my opinion the two biggest forms of social media. Starting of on social media can seem like a daunting task, however once connected it is difficult to stop . Some, like myself feel that Facebook is easier to use, whereas others would say twitter is easier.
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Social networks, especially Twitter is very important with business today. Thanks for such great tips!
I’m still learning about different ways to use twitter. I think it’s good for branding yourself. But, I believe you need to stay active.
Good info on Twitter. I’ve found it extremely helpful for my business. It’s a great place to find the right contacts for your business!
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Excellent stuff. Using Twitter for business is a powerful social media marketing strategy. But understand Twitter etiquette is necessary before we get started it.
You have to be on twitter and social media now as a customer or client will look at you online in all sorts of ways - not being there makes you look backwards.
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