This presentation gives tips, tricks and ideas about how to use Twitter effectively for your business. It covers the pros and cons of Twitter, the jargon, the perfect tweet, why you should set goals before you send your first tweet, how to find topics to talk about and content to share, how to build a community of relevant followers, find experts and influencers to follow and how to use a selection of tools to mange your Twitter life.

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Twitter for business:
making social media work for you
Lesley Moore Consultancy Services
Knockranny Hotel, Westport
Wednesday 23rd April 2014

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Agenda
• Why Twitter: pros and cons
• Setting goals
• Your Twitter profile
• Language/jargon
• The perfect tweet
• Finding and delivering great content
• Building your followers
• Tools to manage your Twitter life

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Why Twitter?
• Twitter has over 230million active users worldwide
• 27% of the Irish adult population owning an account
• Primary function is that it enables you to network with
individuals and businesses of all types
• Communicate directly with customers
• Increases your brand awareness with targeted followers
• Distributes your content wider and faster, improving link
building and driving traffic to your website
• You can communicate and listen

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There are 2 sides
Pros
• It’s immediate
• Every tweet reaches your
followers
• Build a community
around your brand
• Find your direct target
market
• Get feedback from your
customers
Cons
• It’s busy out there
• It takes time to build
followers
• You have to tweet often
• Bad news travels fast
• You have to manage it
• You have to deal with bad
feedback

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Reputation killers
From 400 to 36,500 followers in one
month…for all the wrong reasons

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Bad, bad, bad
The most loathed person on Twitter

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Good

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Community builder

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Setting goals
• What is your business purpose for using Twitter?
• What outcomes do you want?
• Set SMART goals to see if you are on track
• Make it part of your online profile, supporting
and enhancing your website and other social
media activities

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Your Twitter profile
• Have a great profile picture
• Create a header image for better branding
• Write a compelling biography
– 160 characters – use them
– What you do
– What you tweet about
– Use location as it’s searchable
• Don’t add hashtags or quotes

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Great bio

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Twitter language

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Main words
• Tweet
• Follower
• Re-tweets
• PRT
• Un-follow
• Mention
• Hashtag
• Engagement
• Feed
• URL shortener
• Trend
• DM
• Favourites
• Tweeple

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2 key features
Re-tweet Hashtag

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Re-tweets
• To share good content
• Show support
• Share something inspirational
• Share feedback and comments about your
business
• Share something topical or newsworthy

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Re-tweets
• Mention the source
– RT@thename :at the front of the tweet
– Via @twitterhandle : at the end of the tweet
• Change the tweet to suit your audience – maybe
add a hashtag
• Indicate your words with < before your comment
• Keep the re-tweets less than 120 characters
• Start or continue conversations with re-tweets

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Use of hashtags
• Expand the reach of your tweet
– Pushes your tweet into a searchable category
– Reach a new audience
• Use for events
– Movies, conferences, festivals, promotions, breaking
news
• Can monitor what people are saying
• Search results include people who have used
that hashtag whether you follow them or not
• Builds your brand or specific campaign

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Rules on hashtags
• Make a hashtag: start with #, followed by
letters, numbers and underscores – no
other characters
• Cannot begin with a number
• Small or capitals is the same
• Capitalise each word for clarity, e.g
– #ThisIsAHashtag
• Best practice – only 2-3 per tweet

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Finding useful hashtags
• Find trending hashtags with
www.hashtags.org
• #FollowFriday – a way to recommend
followers
• #TBT – throw back Thursday

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The perfect tweet
• Get noticed: have a great headline, add a photo,
video or link – 86% more likely to get re-tweeted
• Use link shorteners like bit.ly
• Leave space for retweets and extra comments
• Add hashtags to extend the reach
• Use correct grammar and complete words
• Tone: keep it professional but show personality
• Use @ carefully

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Re-tweets are powerful

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A perfect tweet example
Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas 2h
40+ Resources and Tools to Take
Your #Blogging and #SocialMedia
Marketing to the Next Level
http://bit.ly/11xNSDx #Marketing

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Other ways to grip your audience
• Calling in your target audience:
– Visitors! Read about the latest attraction in Westport
• Make it newsworthy:
– At last! or Announcing! Revolutionary way to restyle
your home
• Show your excitement:
– Wow! Are you making these awful #Fashion
Blunders?
• Feed their hunger to learn:
– 6 simple steps to a healthier you

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Delivering great content
• What do you talk about?
• Create your own content with a ‘Vine’ video
• Use tools to find content
– Buffer.com
– Feedly.com
– Google alerts
– Socialmention.com

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Build followers
• #Discover
• ‘Who to follow’ – can search within this
• Follow people who follow you
• Search and advanced search
• Use lists to find people and topics of
interest
• Twitter Chat - Tweetchat

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Managing your account
• It will get very busy and need monitoring
• There is a 2,000 follow limit: needs to be
managed
• See it all happening in Tweetdeck
• Hootesuite for monitoring more than one
social media tool
• Use Tweepi to un-follow people

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When to tweet?
• Research by bit.ly
• Posting in the afternoon earlier in the week
is the best chance at achieving a high click
count
• 3.00pm onwards in Ireland – consider the
time zone of your followers
• Followerwonk and Tweriod

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Tweriod report for
@lesleyamoore

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Top tips
• Experiment with Twitter and see what works for
you, but tweet often
• Great content with links, photos and videos will
get you followed
• Make good use of your profile – it helps people
when searching for useful content
• Engage in conversation
• Use the tracking tools – they save lots of time
• Promote your twitter page everywhere