A short guide to Twitter, focused on the employee who has been asked to start using it by their manager.

1. Help! My boss just asked me to start
using Twitter… What should I do?

2. The Problem
Your boss hears that Twitter is a great
marketing tool, or a great way to engage with
potential customers…
The boss issues a demand insisting that you
and your peers all use Twitter regularly –
that’s an order!

3. But how?
First, think about what you want to achieve
and what does the boss expect?
• More sales by finding customers
• Better customer relationships through more
engagement
• Positioning you and the team as experts in
your field
• Influencing the influencers in your industry

4. Create an account
• First, create your account
• Use a sensible name, preferably something
related to your real name
• Do upload a photo – many people refuse to
follow someone who still has the ‘egg’
• Add a short bio and link to where people
can find out more about you

5. Start following people
•Follow some people so your time line has some
tweets that should interest you
• First follow people you will be interested in…
journalists, analysts, TV presenters, leaders in your
industry
• Then consider the “subjects” you are interested in
and create searches so you can see what ANYONE
says on these topics
• Now your timeline will be filled with information
from the people you are interested in and anyone
talking about topics relevant to you

6. Consider the tools
• As mentioned before, you may want to
create some searches by topic. This is not
easy using the basic web interface
• Use a free tool such as Tweetdeck or
Hootsuite so you can view your personal
timeline as well as tweets on all your saved
subjects
• Download the IOS/Android app so you can
easily access your Twitter on your phone

7. Say something
• Don’t just tweet as if this is your Facebook
status update – it’s not, this is a conversation
• Tweet interesting news and comment from your
industry – either your own opinion or add a link
to a news article
• When reading the news, if it’s a good story, click
the Twitter logo and share the story immediately
•Retweet (RT) interesting comment you see from
others
• Reply to other comments – like sending a short
public email anyone can comment on

8. Industry news
• If you want to ensure you are seen as a
source of news on your industry then set up
some Google News Alerts
•http://www.google.com/alerts
• A daily digest of news on a particular topic
can be emailed and you can use this as the
basis of your news tweets for the day

9. Scheduling
• If you are going to be away, but want to
ensure some information is still published on
your account, you can use tools such as
Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to pre-schedule
tweets
•Hootsuite allows you to create a large batch
using a text editor, then to upload them all at
once

10. Promotion
• If you also write a blog then your Twitter
account is great for promoting it
• Comments on blogs have collapsed now,
with much of the discussion taking place on
social networks, such as Twitter rather than
at the end of the blog post itself

11. Personal or work
• Most of those bio statements ‘this is my
personal view, not my company view’ are
meaningless – if Rupert Murdoch tweeted a
statement on his personal Twitter account,
would people think it’s just personal?
• So be careful, what’s published will be out
there forever – even if you delete a tweet
• But, accept that people are not machines, you
have a real life and don’t need to only tweet
corporate news - nobody minds some personal
info, especially when tweeted at the weekend

12. Who owns my account?
• Think about this carefully if you are
tweeting because the boss said that you
should
• If you build a considerable following on
Twitter, is that yours to take with you when
you leave the company or does your
company ‘own’ those followers?
• Worth checking if you are asked to tweet in
your name, but on behalf of your company

13. Summary
• Twitter is a great tool for focused
conversations and engagement
• It’s much easier to reach analysts, journalists,
and real business influencers this way because
the messages are short
• By selecting who you follow, you can create a
great feed of ‘news’ packed full of information
from influencers in your field
• A blog can also be a useful addition to Twitter,
because you can write your opinion in more
length, then talk about that on Twitter

14. These notes were prepared by:
Mark Hillary
j.mp/markhillary
www.twitter.com/markhillary