HOW TO USE TWITTER FOR BUSINESS MARKETING

 As a result, It is important that your Twitter presence have the same look and feel as your other presence online. This helps people identify your business and builds trust. So, as part of your social media strategy, choose an account name and images consistent with your other online presence and your brand.

 Let’s start by going to Twitter.com where you will be greeted with a blank page, where you can give your email address, come up with a password and leave your real name.

 And to come up with a Twitter handle or username. On Twitter, your username, or handle, is your identity. If you can, sign up for Twitter by using your name or a variation of it as your username (assuming somebody else isn’t already using it).

 That’s it your done; you just created your account. Twitter will now ask you for topics you’re interested in and will give you the opportunity to start already following suggested accounts or accounts of the people you already know by connecting your Gmail or Outlook email accounts.

 We suggest you skip these for now. People will get a notification when you follow them, and it is better to show a full, interesting profile to them when they figure out who is following them instead of the empty profile your profile is still right now.

 At a later stage, you can always still use the “Find people you know” button located on the right side of your profile page. This will give you the option to find people you already know using your address book from either Gmail or Outlook.

 If you’re a really small business, we might suggest using your business name as the name for your account, but using a personal photo for the profile photo, adds a personal touch and might resonate better with your customers.

 The second picture you need to upload is the Twitter header photo; this is a large background photo. The big-screen real estate gives you enough space to tell a story about your business maybe. Similar to the cover you have on your Facebook company page, this visual will appear at the top of your profile page.

 If you go to your profile, you will be greeted with a beautiful empty profile. By clicking on the “edit profile” button, your profile transforms into an easy way to upload a new profile picture and header photo.

 While you’re still editing your profile, don’t forget to add your location. Especially for a local business, this can help build a stronger connection with your potential audience. But remember, Twitter is a global phenomenon, if people from another city or country are visiting your profile, they might not recognize your specific neighborhood or community name.

 Of course, you want people that visit your profile also end up as visitors to your site. By adding your website or link to your blog, you make it easy for people to find out more about your business.

 Maybe put a link to a special landing page for people coming from your Twitter profile? This is a great way to welcome those visitors to your site and make them feel right at home.

 Next, to your visual branding like your profile picture and your header photo, your bio might be one of the most critical items on your profile. It gives you the opportunity to tell the people viewing your profile precisely who you are and what you do.

 You’ve only got 160 characters though, so skip the mission statement and talk about the benefits you deliver. Why would someone want to follow you? And while you’re at it, add a little personality to help your profile stand out even more from the crowd.

 Your profile is complete, and you might feel the urge to start following a lot of accounts to let the world know that you’re alive (and in the hopes of them following you back). But hold your horses a little bit longer, your profile is still empty on one important point, and that is the tweets themselves.

 Talking on Twitter, though, is something completely different. It is a fast-paced place where people share ideas, parts of sentences, quotes from others, etc. At first glance, it might look a bit hectic, almost like a bar, but that’s where the charm lies with Twitter.

 Try using the search function of Twitter to search for people talking about words that you use in your business as well and start engaging or Tweeting with them. Getting yourself familiar with sending out tweets.

 Let’s first start with the basics; a Tweet is a message that you post on the network. It can contain text, pictures, a GIF and/or a video, or a combination of these.

 When you see someone else posting something interesting, you can send a reply to that person, or if you want to talk to people directly, you can send an @reply to them. The @reply is a public message that mentions the Twitter username of the person you’re replying to or sending a Tweet towards.

Twitter Business

 If you want to say something to someone and you want the Tweet to not just appear in the timeline of everyone who follows both, be sure to start your tweet with a dot, and it also appears to everyone just following you.

 A direct message allows you to send something to another Twitter user who appears in a special private place. Although it used to be that you could only do this to people who follow you, nowadays you can send a DM to everyone (unless they specifically blocked this in their settings).

 Direct Messages are also a great way to form a group chat with your most loyal customers straight on Twitter. You can start a private conversation or create a group conversation with anyone who follows you.

 Anyone who is in the group can send DM’s to the group, and everyone in the group can see all messages, even if everyone doesn’t follow each other. Lastly, anyone in your group conversation can add additional participants, newly added members won’t see the history from before they joined, though.

 A Retweet (RT) or Quoted Tweet is a message created and sent by someone else that you think is relevant to your audience as well. You can hit the RT button, and it gives you the option to RT something straight away or add a comment and quote the Tweet of the other person.

 The last type of Tweets that are relevant to your business is Promoted Tweets. Just like boosting a post on Facebook, you can also use Twitter’s Ad platform to promote a tweet to reach a bigger audience.

 Of course, if you’re not following anyone else on Twitter, your timeline could look a bit lonely. Now that you’ve got your Twitter account created, you know the basic of how to Tweet and how to engage with other people. It is time to start following them.

 When you follow someone on Twitter, you subscribe to what they share on the platform. Try finding relevant people using the Twitter search or by connecting your Gmail or Outlook address book as described earlier to start following your first set of people.

 Although there are certain Chrome extensions out there that let you automatically follow all the followers of another account (let’s say your competitors) be careful to use these since they are against policy of Twitter.

 Take it slow, start following relevant people, and start engaging with the ones that follow you back. After all, you don’t want to get your account suspended in the first week because of violating their policies.

 If all goes well, you should start to get your first sets of followers back by now as well, don’t be afraid if it is also people you’ve never met before, be kind to them, welcome them with a personal message to your online following and start engaging with them.

 Although the first line of business on any social network is being social and being helpful to your followers, it doesn’t sometimes hurt to share some of your content as well to help drive traffic back to your website.

 Twitter is a great tool for this; you can do this by simply typing a good reason why your particular piece of content will bring value to the reader, adding your link, and don’t forget to add a Call-To-Action (CTA) in your copy that will make your readers want to read the entire piece.

 When sharing your and other links on Twitter it is always best practice to use a URL shortener because of the limited space offered in a Tweet. Next, to the added benefit of having more characters in your Tweet for the surrounding copy, URL shorteners are available that give you some nice extra options.

 One of our favorites is Pixelme; Pixelme gives you the option to automatically have everyone who clicks a link you share to be added to a retargeting pool on Facebook. They shorten any link, and they’ll include a Facebook Pixel, which in turn helps you grow your custom audience on Facebook every time someone clicks. Simple, but effective!

 Sharing a link to a content piece you created is a great way to get more traffic to your website. However, you might not get everything you can from each piece of content you create and share via Twitter.