An approach to Twitter “How to” The following aims at Twitter beginners and moderate users.
Advanced users please, jump in and share your experience.
If you do not have a Twitter account read this first and register, if you have one then, question yourself: Do I favorably expose my brand?
Is my business genre and specifics clearly exposed through my Twitter account background image? If not you will be better of creating a new background image including your logo and a few strong images/words best depicting your business.
Your “war name”: Make it meaningful and related to your sector of activity, try to make it short as people tweeting back will only have an available number of spaces and characters equal to 140-(your pseudo) even less if including an URL.
Fortunately, Twitter shortens URL to 19 chars.
So if posting a link the available num chars and spaces is 140 - (any pseudo + 19)
If tweeting from your Twitter home page then you could use 140 -19 as your pseudo is not accounted for.
It helps to get used to tweet length, you should not tweet out of impulsion, prepare in your text editor a few versions of your next tweets.
Copycat tweet does not work, it results in a warning stating: “You already Tweet it”
You could reuse a previous Tweet but not in the same session
Do not tweet and expect in return followers just by being there and casting your tweets to the wind. Check who’s following whom and follow twitters you have interest in.
This statement should be your motto “My interaction on Twitter should be driven by making myself valuable to my followers and those non following me yet!”
Set a goal, for example aim at gaining 1000 quality followers in 30 days.
Do not rest your quest during Weekends and keep an eye on it by using your smart phone.
Expect to spend about 2 hour daily working on it.
What you should not expect: Using Twitter as a direct and obvious web-marketing tool for your Website.
You will trigger visits to your site by interacting with other Twitter users.
Post only meaningful well-constructed tweets and only a link related to your tweets’ content, not aiming directly at your index page.
“Red widgets” for sale @ mySpam.com is a No No!
Something in the line of: “Just posted the results of my new research on red widgets extinction in 23 US States” will fly better. (104 chars including an URL leaves 36 for primary users pseudo)
Important detail: Note I wrote above “quality followers” think about followers in terms of complementary or related content and in the same fashion you envision a potential web link exchange source.
Post intriguing, valuable, factual, teaser tweets.
Do not spam or use white gloves!
Use Twitter to provide exposure to your content, say something interesting related to your most recent web content. With little luck, you could be re-tweeted thus cranking on some viral MKTG effect
Acknowledge new followers and add a tad of your own marketing in your thanks’ tweet, but again use judgement and never over do it.
To avoid posting twice the same tweet include in your thanks something related to their own interest, it shows that you care.
Avoid (while building up your followers base) seeking follower with many thousands followers, if you take time to survey the followers (and you should) you will realize that the bulk of followers is mostly built out of “fluff” without real “meat”. Prefer taping in the range of 200 to 500 as they still self manage their own base and do not use Twitter “laborers”.
Seeking followers out of your category range:
Many categories offer added benefits such as Journalists, Pro Photographers, Publishers, Writers, and indeed if you sale something any category that could be interested by your range of offerings and could afford your product or services.
Keep in mind that you are building a network of followers leading to a potentially profitable future business relationship.
Do not blindly follow back; you could be in for a surprise, like inviting followers relevant to the “unregulated professions” range!
Putting at work the “Following” and “Followers”
This calls for doing some homework, remember to seek and follow only quality tweeters,
Click a follower’s image and review the short background if it includes a link to the follower’s website save the URL in a “Tweet contacts” browser dir then review his/her site, and make a note it you are interested in seeking a relationship with the web owner.
Don’t do anything yet, go back and post one or two tweets to the twitter you wish contacting. The next day go back to the website, find a direct or email contact and go for it, starting by mentioning your following reciprocity, then include your usual dog and pony show to seek a link exchange that will benefit both of you etc. You know the story.
Using Twitter search capability: In your account go the search bar, for example if you have interest in multicolor widgets, enter the term preceded by the # sign and review the results.
What have you done, simply using the tag power, now put it at your service, again your field is multicolor widgets, then one of your first tweets should contain: loren #multicolor ipsum #widgets non eram nescius, then next time any user searches for multicolor widgets you will be listed in the results, not too bad!
The following ending paragraph relates only on personal experience.
It could help you to have a G+1 button on landing pages mentioned in your tweets, and since I already cut the Twitter topic’s line, you may disagree with the following but I have seen a traffic increase by inter-connecting all my social network accounts, however it too early to make a sound judgement on causes/effects.
[edited by: engine at 3:32 pm (utc) on Feb 15, 2012]
[edit reason] typo [/edit]
