Tweeting For Business

Tweeting for Business Twitter Tactics for your Company

What Is Twitter?
Public instant messaging
A way to talk about what you’re doing ‘right now’ – publicly, by default
Short messages – only 140 characters
Opt-in – you choose who to watch and you see their public messages
Can also talk privately with others
Many ways to send and receive tweets

Twitter’s Growth
Twitter has about 4 million users now
363,000 users in the U.S.
There are more than 1 million tweets/day

What Good Is It?
Get feedback about your business – track what people are saying and address problems quickly
Mingle with the ‘famous’ in your industry
Stay on top of trends
Monitor what’s being said about your customers to help them protect their own brands

Example 1 and 2: Dell, Comcast
Dell earned $1 million through Twitter in the last year
Dell sends messages to its Twitter subscribers about special private sales
Comcast is turning around their negative reputation by displaying genuine interest in customer issues posted on Twitter

Example 3: Coudal Partners
Jewelbox inserts issue
Tweeted about the problem I was having
Within 30 minutes, @coudal contacted me
Emailed the company representative
New inserts are on the way
Coudal still has a happy customer! I’ll probably tweet about this experience…

Most Importantly, Twitter…
Puts a personal face on your business
Gets you a steady stream of ideas and links that you can use in your own business
Enables you to get (and offer) help
Connects you with others who share your interests, personally and professionally

5 Stages of Acceptance
Denial – Why should I care about this?
Presence – I don’t get it, but I guess I should get a free account.
Dumping – Posting links to blog, PR docs
Conversing – Talking to others one-on-one
Microblogging – Sharing useful info and conversing one-on-one

Getting Started
Visit twitter.com and sign up for free
Get a handle that relates to your business
Multiple accounts – personal & business?
Fill in your profile using keywords
Upload your photo (gain credibility!)
Add your location if appropriate

Getting Started, Continued
Visit search.twitter.com and look for others who share your interests
Look at your followees’ followers to find new people to follow
Watch, learn, and enter the conversation when you’re ready (lurk for a few weeks)
Tweet often – daily is recommended

Let People Know You Tweet
Put your handle in your signature for email, forum posts, blogging
Put a logo on your website, linked to your Twitter page

What Should I Talk About?
Share great links and resources you find
Share information about your business
Reach out to people who use your services or products
Talk about upcoming company events
Share problems and ask questions
Add links to your latest blog posts

Best Practices
Think before you type! It’s permanent and searchable
Be authentic – it’s about letting people get to know you personally and professionally
Don’t push your services or products – it can get you banned
Share information and become valued as an expert in your field

Dealing With Other People
Follow those who interest you
Unfollow people to stop seeing their messages (there’s no need to reciprocate if you’re not interested)
Block problematic people – that means they won’t be able to see your updates
Spam is rampant – just don’t follow it!

Useful Tips
Use @handle to reply or refer to people
Use direct messages (D handle) to talk privately with another person
Retweet (RT) interesting tweets to others in your network – it’s respectful
Hashtag (#topic) tweets to create a custom results page

3 rd Party Tools – Hundreds!
TweetDeck and Twhirl– desktop applications to manage your account
TweetBerry and iTweet (and other mobile apps)
TweetLater – set keywords for search and have results delivered to your email
TwellowHood – find other Twitter users by geographical location (there were 148 users in Fort Collins as of Thursday)

Groups
Not yet a Twitter feature – in the works
Will enable you to categorize your followers list and choose to send tweets to only certain people
You can set up groups on 3 rd party software like TweetDeck, but only to view incoming tweets, not to ‘broadcast’

Resources
The basics
Creative ways to use Twitter
Twitter for business (articles and video)
Twitter services and tools
Legal issues
Backgrounds and icons

http://www.twitip.com	1032
http://internet-marketing-for-blondes.com	22
http://blondeaffiliates.blogspot.com	10
http://www.slideshare.net	7
http://digidezinr.blogspot.com	7
http://activerain.com	4
http://www.memonic.com	2
http://www.leapzonestrategies.com	2
http://www.netvibes.com	1
http://203.208.33.132	1
http://feedproxy.google.com	1
resource://brief-content	1
http://www.google.co.uk	1
http://mail.uniquesurroundings.biz	1

Tweeting For Business

by redkitedesign on Jan 08, 2009

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Tweeting For Business — Presentation Transcript