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Business Development

How a small business can get started on Twitter

By ⋅ June 29, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment
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Twitter – the latest social media phenomenon has grown massively in recent months and it should be a key tool in your business armoury.

Twitter lets you publish 140 characters or less bits of information about yourself or your business onto a dedicated business page, to get success you need to encourage others to be your followers and as such this will ensure your messages grow to an ever larger audience.Twitter bird yelling (c) Fotolia

So here are my top Twitter tips to get a business started.
Top Twitter tips

1. Sign up for a new Twitter account using your business name, keep it short and sensible and if possible try and keep it relevant to your business – this is so you can be easily found by other.

2. Alter the look of this page with a photo, TweetBack, URL of your company website, maybe your business logo, image.

3. Now go search for users maybe in a similar industry, leads, you can even get Twitter to trawl your Gmail or similar to see who in your mail box has a Twitter account so you can invite them –all through Twitter. When you have found them – follow them, they are the most likely to be responsive to people/organisations they know and are more likely to follow you back.

4. I get asked a lot, ‘how often should I tweet’ and it in truth there is no golden rule just try and keep it consistent so don’t go days without tweeting, to start with 1 or 2 times a day should be fine. As you get more familiar then you can begin to use some of the many Twiiter add ons to improve what you do, I like TweetDeck myself.

5. Keep Tweets interesting you only have 140 characters, so thing would you really like to read this?

6. Links to other useful resources in your industry or thanks or maybe just hints and tips are all liked on Twitter and help to give your Twitter feed a useful feel to it.

7. Finally always reply to direct messages, if someone has bothered to send you a direct message you need to reply.

If you follow these top tips you will begin to see how you and your business can gain benefit and exploit the opportunities that Twitter gives, it should go without saying this needs to be part of your marketing strategy and can work in line with other online and offline marketing. Why not follow me on Twitter alpenwest


Related posts you may wish to read:

  1. How do I auto follow on Twitter?
  2. 5 ways for a business to get their Social Networking RIGHT
  3. Why should I Tweet?
  • http://determined2.com Goals/Resolutions

    Thanks for the information, I am still trying to figure out the best approach for using “Twitter” There are so many sites that help in the marketing of your business or website.

    • admin

      Thanks for your comment, i am glad you find the blog post helpful i shall be posting more on Twitter in the coming months so be sure you subsribe to my RSS feed.

      Alistair

  • http://www.peterstephens.co.uk Peter Stephens

    Good advice Alistair, I’ve just emailed this to a couple people.

    • Sarah

      Thanks for this info, very valuable and worth while for me to keep refering back to.
      Thanks

  • Pingback: Twitter can make your business money | The Life of an Online Business Development Manager

    • Simon

      Very good advice, some people complicate thinks far to much so thanks for this. I have found a problem with Twitter if i cant use my company name as someone else already has it (in my case seemingly a USA tool supplier) to choose something else suitable, dont know if you have any thoughts on this?

      Thanks for the advice though you have covered a lot on Twitter and i have read a lot on this ‘new media’ and how it can work for my business, your advice is very sound.

      Simon

      • Alistair

        Hey Simon,

        Glad to help – the company name in use is an interesting one and no different from domain unavailability although hopefully mitigated by the availability of .co.uk, .com etc etc. Of course on Twitter there is only one option is it available yes or no and if no you need to choose something else and make sure the description and URL is relevant for your business, this is your only option i’m afraid.

        • Stanley

          Great advice here and thanks for sharing this with us, i think there are some very saliant points that many businesses would do well to heed, to often a business jumps in without any thought or idea as to what they was to achieve and where they want to go – business wise…..

          I for one will be passing this to my management team and asking them to read and take note…..

          Thanks

          • Alistair

            Thanks for your comments, glad you found it useful, I blog plenty more about Twitter as you can see, so please check it out….

            thanks,

            Alistair

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