Marketing Your Business With Twitter

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Marketing YourBusiness with

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Marketing Your Business With Twitter

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Marketing Your Business With Twitter

Twitter can be confusing, especially if you’ve

never used it before. We’re here to help! No

matter what level you are at with Twitter, you

can use these tips and will be a Twitter

expert in no time.

1. What is Twitter?

2. What Should I Tweet About?

3. How Do I Get People to Follow Me?

4. Becoming a Twitter Expert

5. Conclusion and Additional Resources

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is a microblogging service, which means that you

can post short updates and send messages limited to 140

characters or fewer. Originally, the character limitation was

implemented to make Twitter more compatible with mobile.

In fact, it remains hugely successful with the mobile audi-

ence with 43% of Twitter users checking their Twitter solely

on their cell phone.

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Twitter Vocabulary

Twitter has a whole language to itself, but here are a few of the

more common terms you will come across:

@Twitter Handle: Your username.

Follow: The action users take to subscribe to someone’s

updates on Twitter. When you follow a user, you will see all of

their updates in your home stream.

Follower: A user who follows your updates.

Tweet: Your status update or message.

Hashtag: Symbolized by # preceding the word or phrase, a

hashtag is a way to categorize what a message is about or to

make it easier to find by searching for a specific hashtag.

Direct Message (DM): A private message between Twitter

users.

Retweet (RT): Rebroadcasting another user’s tweet to your

followers.

Promoted Tweet: Twitter ad.

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Anatomy of a TweetA tweet can be up to 140 characters, but the ideal length for retweeting is

100 to 120 characters. When linking to a website or blog post, you want to

use a shortened URL, such as a bit.ly. Twitter does automatically shorten

long URLs, but there are benefits to using a URL shortener, such as

enhanced tracking. If applicable, you can add a hashtag to your tweet; two

to three hashtags at the most will do. When referring to another person or

attributing a link, be sure to mention that person by using their Twitter

handle as well.

Setting Up a Twitter AccountSetting up a Twitter account for your business is very easy. Go to https://twitter.com/signup and follow their simple instructions. Unlike Facebook, you do NOT need a personal Twitter account to create a business account. You can simply sign right up as your business. Instead of using your Full Name when you sign up, simply use your business name. When they ask you to choose your username, choose an @handle that relates to your business or business name.

Although quite a popular social network, Twitter doesn’t work for every person or every business. Twitter thrives on engagement and a back-and-forth tweeting and instantaneous response. If you don’t think you can keep up, Twitter might not be the platform for you. But, if you want to connect with your audience and drive traffic, you will want to make sure that Twitter is part of your social media strategy.

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What Should I Tweet About?

If you’re stumped about what you should be tweeting, here are a few ideas:

Blog Posts: Twitter can be great for driving traffic to your blog. If you are writing content that is fun and relevant to your Twitter followers, you can bet that they will be eager to click on those links.

Other People’s Stuff: Find a blog post you think your audience will love? See a great tweet that someone else posted? Tweet and retweet it! It’s a great way to offer value to your audience and to connect with other Twitter users.

Reply: Not only is it important to reply to users who tweet you questions and messages, but you can find other users that have questions about a product or service through search. Just search for terms related to your busi-ness. When you find someone who needs recommendations or assistance, connect with them!

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Live Tweet at Events: Events are great places to use for Twitter content.

If you are watching someone speak, you can Tweet brief snippets of their

talk and snap pictures to go with it. Many events have their own hashtag

which makes it easy for others to follow the conversation and to connect

with other event attendees!

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Photos: Although not quite as visually centric as some other social media

channels, Twitter has been adding features that help to make your photos

stand out. Now, when you attach a photo to a tweet, it is automatically

previewed in your other follower’s stream.

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At this point, you are probably wondering how you get other users to follow

you. We have three key components that will help you to gain a great

Twitter following.

How Do I Get People to Follow Me?

1. Make sure your profile is optimized.

Having a properly set-up and optimized profile is a cornerstone of any social

media strategy. On Twitter, you want to make sure that your design looks good,

and that you have correctly sized images as your profile, cover and background

images. Your username or @handle should relate to your business and be as

short as you can possibly make it, while still being understandable. This way,

users will have more characters when they tweet at you. Also, make sure you

put your location information and important keywords in your bio so that other

users can find you via search.

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2. Post regularly and often.

Other Twitter users are more likely to follow you if they know that you post

regularly and that they will be able to see your updates. The lifetime of a

tweet is around twenty minutes, so if you want other users to be able to see

and interact with your updates, make sure you are posting often. Don’t be

afraid to re-post previous updates, it’s likely that a whole different segment

of your audience will see them.

3. Mention Others and Respond in a Timely Manner

Get other users attention by tweeting at them or mentioning them in your

updates. Did you find a great article by an industry leader that is perfect to

share to your followers? Make sure you mention their @username when

you tweet, it’s good practice to give attribution and makes them aware that

you are sharing their content. Also, respond to others who mention you in a

timely manner. Twitter moves very quickly and Twitter users generally like a

quick response, especially regarding customer service issues.

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Twitter Management ToolsTwitter can get crazy, especially once you gain followers and have more in-

teraction. It can be pretty hard to keep track of it all on the Twitter interface,

so here are two comprehensive Twitter management tools that will make

your life a lot easier.

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a great social me-

dia management tool that can help with most

social networks, not just Twitter. It has a free

version and a very affordable Pro version

that has even more capabilities. Schedule

tweets, view different updates streams, and

view all of your social media in one place.

http://www.hootsuite.com

TweetDeck: TweetDeck is similar to Hoot-

suite, but only manages your Twitter ac-

count. You can schedule out Tweets, view

different streams such as who has men-

tioned you, your home stream, your sent

tweets and more. TweetDeck is a free ser-

vice by Twitter. https://about.twitter.com/

products/tweetdeck

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Become a Twitter Expert

Here are a few ways to take your Twitter expertise to the max.

Jump on Trending Topics

Almost all social media networks have a Trend-

ing Topics section where you can click on a

topic or hashtag and a stream of updates sur-

rounding the trend will appear. It is very easy to

use trending topics to gain visibility. If you see

a trend that is relevant to your business, use

the hashtag or topic in an update or join in the

conversation! For example, if you are in tech-

nology or software and there is a big iOS up-

date trending, feel free to share your thoughts.

Find other users who are commenting about

the trend and reply to them as well.

Just a note: hashtag hijacking is frowned upon on Twitter. Just because

#Oprah is trending does mean you can use it to promote your product. For

example: “We have a huge blowout sale going on! #Oprah” is not okay.

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Join in Twitter Chats

There are a variety of Twitter chats that happen every day. A Twitter chat is

when a group of Twitter users have a conversation, usually in Q&A format

and led by a designated user, using a specific hashtag. There is a Twitter

chat for almost every industry and interest. It is a great way to interact with

other users with similar interests, help you gain a following and let you con-

tribute to the Twitter community. For a list of Twitter chats, visit: http://tweet-

reports.com/twitter-chat-schedule/

Create Twitter Lists

A Twitter list is a curated list of Twitter users, which can be either public

or private. When you add a user to a public list, they are notified. This is a

great way to gain the attention of others by adding them to a list of “Experts”

or “People to Watch.” If other users find your list interesting, they will be

able to follow it as well. This can also help you to keep those you follow

organized by sorting them into different lists.

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Use Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets are Twitter’s ads. How promoted tweets work is when a

user searches a certain phrase or hashtag, an ad that has targeted that cer-

tain phrase or hashtag will appear in the search results. You can also target

ads to appear in user’s home streams.

Through ads.twitter.com, you can also view analytics and performance of all

of your tweets, including paid and organic.

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You are now on your way to mastering Twitter marketing for your business!

The biggest takeaway from this ebook should be that Twitter is a great way

to connect and engage with your customers and potential customer. Twitter

creates a conversation and it is easy to answer questions, solve problems

and reach out to those who need your help or could use your product or ser-

vices. Twitter can most definitely become one of the greatest assets to your

business.

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