Embrace Twitter!
I love twitter. It has brought me great business connections and new friends. I have written about this before in an old post, but there are always new clients wanting to know about it. I find it so useful, and have met some amazing people through it who given a huge amount of help, especially with the publishing of my book. I find the ability to connect people to businesses very fast and rewarding.
If you are new to it, or are one of those many people who have an account but don’t really know what to ‘do’ with it, ask yourself why you are using it. Some people are just ‘watchers’. They like to follow people and see what interests them, but they don’t say much themselves. With twitter you can use it as you like. I find it useful to connect with local businesses and trades, as well as spreading the word about what I do. I try to balance my tweets by being very ‘real’. After all, if people don’t like the way I tweet, they won’t like the way I treat!
Twitter Tips from me.
Not an expert in SEO but a real person!
There are certain business twitter suggestions that you will see in many marketing sites and forums – like doing five tweets a day, and a certain percentage must be direct marketing. It really depends what you are selling. If you are Sainsburys, you won’t be ‘chatting’ but you should be there to answer questions and direct any issues to the correct department. If you are a small business, you will need to tweet as ‘you’. Be real. The clients you are looking for want to know you.
In order to gain followers as a business, I suggest you look at your profile. Have a good profile shot and choose your words well. If you don’t upload a profile shot twitter will give you an ‘egg’ shape….and people tend not to follow eggs – eggs used to be spammers! If you have a website or blog, add that too. If you’re just you, and not a business, don’t be afraid to say a little about yourself. When people follow me, I look at their profile and their recent tweets to see if I would like to follow them back. You don’t have to follow everyone that follows you!
Most businesses tweet. Restaurants, shops etc. Follow people that interest you. If you are a business don’t be afraid to follow other like minded businesses. It’s good to share. You will begin to notice which twitterers do their own tweets and those who have generic ones.
The more people you follow the more interesting your ‘timeline’ will be, but remember if you only tweet once a day, people who follow you that have lots of other people to follow, may miss your tweet as it zooms past. I tweet a lot, so if you follow me and not many others, I may clog up your timeline! It can be addictive, and I don’t need to tell you the perils of sitting at a computer all day! So limit your time on it. If you have tweeted something that gets answered, please remember to interact with the follower who took the time to talk to you. Use it like texting. You wouldn’t ignore a text. Would you?
The main problem that puts people off twitter is understanding what a hash tag does. That lovely little # in front of a word is such a useful tool or in some cases a quirkiness. Basically, it acts like a search engine. If you look at the discover button on your twitter page you will see the subjects that are currently ‘trending’ with a #tag. So when there is current news, or a TV programme or something happening like a lunar eclipse, you can click on ‘all tweets’ and see what people are saying without actually following them.
As a business, when I would like to make a tweet more powerful I may put a #tag before words like #Massage or #Seaweed – when potential new followers are looking they may put #facial or #Taunton into the search bar and all recent tweets with those words in will come up. A good business tool, but hash tags can also be used in a quirky way – I often use #JuicingRocks. You will also see people using things like #JustSaying and #HappyDays…. That’s twitter!
If you are going to really use twitter and not just be a watcher, be generous with your tweets. I tend to tweet when I am going to a particular restaurant or shop to spread the love a bit. You can tell many more people than you would in the office or the pub on a Saturday night. To do this, you need to gain followers. To gain followers you need to tweet, follow people, and actually answer people.
One word about the favourite button. It used to be there to save tweets you liked. With information or links to look at later. Anything that you ‘favourite’ is kept in your profile. Have a look at other peoples profiles to see who they follow and who follows them. It seems that people are now using the favourite button as an acknowledgement without having to interact. This isn’t FaceBook, but it seems that people are using it in a similar way to the ‘like’ button. Personally it irritates me. Everything you ‘favourite’ stays in your profile – unless you go through and delete them all! So if you are a business, there is no need to do this. Just favourite things that interest you, so potential clients can look and see what you like.
Another little thing to be aware of when setting up your account is linking twitter with Face Book and vice versa. There are different views on this. If, as a business you want to drive people to your FaceBook page where you can put more text, then connect the two together. So post on FaceBook and link it to twitter. Be aware that some people, like me, don’t click through a tweet to see a FaceBook post, but many people do. It’s worth mixing it up a bit.
Instagram seems to be another place where you can share posts across Facebook and Twitter. Remember that if you post on Instagram your picture will show in Facebook, but it will only show as a link on Twitter, which can be a bit boring. It does however show people on twitter that you have an Instagram account too, so I suggest you limit the linking. Don’t be lazy!
One last thing. The help button is very useful! Go tweet! It’s faster than Face Book and such a useful tool!
