USING TWITTER
FOR BUSINESS
Jaimie Dobson
iNet Engineers Ltd

Today You Will Learn…
• What Twitter Is?
• How to Start ‘Tweeting’
• Where to Find ‘Followers’
• Twitter Etiquette
• What Tools are available to Help You

What is Twitter?
• Micro-Blogging
Service
• “What are you
doing?”
• 140 Characters
• ‘Broadcast’ rather
than ‘Conversational’

What Can You Do With It?
• Drive traffic to your website or a specific page on
your website
• Learn what’s going on in your industry
• Share opinions, expertise, tools and resources
• Make new connections and friends
• Keep your customers informed, find suppliers
• Keep in contact with colleagues
• Develop your brand

Totally Mobile

Who’s Using It?
• 700,000 Small Business in UK*
• 6000 New Business’ are Signing up Daily*
*Source: O2

Question Break
Ask Away…

Getting Started

Join the Conversation
• http://twitter.com
• Choose Your Name
Wisely @yourname
• Person to Person
Medium
• Open and honest

Set Up Your Account

Complete Your Bio
• Use a Good Head & Shoulders Pic
• A keyword rich Bio that describes what
you do in 160 chars
– E.g. “Creative digital and litho print graphic
design that sells your business”
• Turn the “Protect My Updates” Off
• Add Your Web Address

Learn the Lingo
• DM = Direct Message
• @ = Use to reply and always include proceeding
a Twitter ID in a reply
• RT = Retweet
• Tweet = Sending a message on Twitter
• #TrendingTopic or “Hashtags” e.g.
#FollowFriday or #michaeljackson etc

If Only I’d Have Known…
• Don’t • Do
– Join any monetize your tweets – Thank others that have
type of service retweeted (RT) your
messages
– Try and pretend you are – Have fun, enjoy yourself, be
someone else - just be honest transparent, honest &
and open with people respectful of others
– Follow people just to get them – Reply to others in public if you
to follow you back feel others would be interested
– Just promote all your own – Answer anyone that
messages you
products and services – Try and follow targeted people
– Overtweet useless and
mundane stuff

Question Break
Ask Away…

Build Your Community

Time to Start Tweeting
• http://twitter.com/inetengineers

Find People with Tools
• Numerous 3rd Party Tools
– http://www.twellow.com/ Twitter Business Directory
– http://mrtweet.com/ Analyzes your Twitter network, to help you
discover great people, and recommend you to others
– http://tweepsearch.com Allows you to search for other people in
twitter, by keywords within their Bios.
– http://wefollow.com Discover people with same interests or wants
– http://localtweeps.com/ Find people local to you by Postcode or City

Your First Tweet

Useful Tool
• You’ve Got 140 Characters To Play With
• Long URLs (Web Addresses) Eat into your “Tweeting Space”
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8114694.stm
[49 Characters]
– http://tinyurl.com/le46sh
[25 Characters]
• Online URL Shortening Tool http://tinyurl.com

Applications to Help You

Recommended Application: Tweet Deck

www.tweetlater.com

www.tweetlater.com

www.tweetlater.com

Recommended Application: HootSuite

Get Mobile
• Mobile Website: http://m.twitter.com
• iPhone – Twitterrific, Tweetie
• Blackberry – Twitterberry
• http://twitter.com/downloads

#Trending Topics
Grouping Tweets Together

In a Nutshell…
• Defined Twitter
• Account Set-up
• Build ‘Followers’
• Do’s and Don’ts
• 3rd Party Applications such as
Tweetdeck.com

USING TWITTER
FOR BUSINESS
Jaimie Dobson
iNet Engineers Ltd