What are you doing? This is what Twitter asks you. You can answer in 140 characters or less. So you inform the internet of what you are up to. "meeting with client...", "launched new product...", "spending weekend with family...". Its a nice way to get an insight into people or their businesses.
People follow you and you can follow them. I tend to follow people that maintain a balance of what they twitter about. It can't be all business, "3rd quarter press release out now", no one cares. It can't be all mindless personal stuff either, "I am eating toast". You have to have a bit of everything if you want to keep peoples attention. Show off the products and services of your company, but also give an insight into you and your people. Highlight aspects of your city or region, link to interesting articles and developments in your industry. If all these things are well balanced then you will have an entertaining, humanised and informative twitter account that people will want to follow.
What this means for your bottom line? You would be suprised where people come from to follow you. If they are impressed with your tweets and want to find out more, they may look at your website, they might give you a call, or pass your information on to someone they know that needs you. But it is really not a direct marketing tool. A twitter account just shows that you are proud of your business and the industry you are in. That you want to keep clients and potential clients informed on what you are up too.
This is our twitter account WWDesign. You can look through what we have recently posted, look who we follow, who is following us. If you like you can sign up for a twitter account.
Here are some further tips if you want to sign up.
- Keep your name short and relevant - you name is in each tweet and cuts down on the number of characters you get. Keep it personal, like your name or nickname, or professional, related to your company.
- Finding others - search for words that may have appeared in someones tweet. Topics you are interested in. Try your towns name first, or your favourite hobby. The search results will list people who have typed this word recently and you can see if you would like to follow them.
- Talking to others - if you type @theirusername at the start of your post, you are addressing that post to them. They will find your message when they search for posts with their name in it. Be polite, ask questions.
- Talking directly - if you are following someone and they are following you, you can send them a direct message. This is a private message to them, like email.
- Blocking people - people may start following you that you would prefer not to, you can easily block these people. You control who you follow and who follows you.
Anyway, that will get you started. It is quite fun. Just remember the balance and that it is another public face of your company.
