Twitter for Business Growth- A guide prt2 – Web2.0 Social Media Series
part 2 Making sense of all the terminology
Ok you have you account set up and you have hopefully spent some time customizing your profile albeit even with some basic colour changes etc. Now we need to know how to use it and what the terms mean.
So here we go:
• Tweet – This is basically your content that you have posted in the 140 character limit.
• Handle – that’s your twitter name @yourname – balance short with descriptive and no matter what your business handle is get your personal name if you can even if you don’t plan to use it right now. – It’s like your URL and will have value some day.
- Follow – As it sounds when you choose to follow someone you receive their updates or ‘tweets’ on your homepage in twitter, and vice versa
- Replies – this is what it is called when someone writes a tweet directly at your handle – @yourname – it’s a way of connecting with a follower in a more personal way that engages them more.
- Retweet – this is a tactic of republishing someone else’s tweet – the original tweet along with author stays intact, but you are basically showing someone’s tweet to your followers – many people find this a great way to add content and acknowledge good stuff from the folks they follow.
- Hashtag #– this is a way people categorize tweets so that others might use the same tag and effectively create a way for people to view related tweets – it will something like #marketing – more on this in search.
- DM – This stands for a direct message and is more personal and can only be sent by people following each other. It’s a good way to Grab the other person attention and start a personal 2 way conversation, I like to filter my direct messages in my gmail account as well for ease of reference
Ok that’s the terminology sorted, so you know what it all stands for , let’s start thinking of how we can utilise the power of twitter for you business: Think of twitter in these ways:
1. Twitter can allow you to connect with others in your market and network to start sharing your opinions and views – priceless for establishing your authority and getting your name and brand out there as point of expertise
2. Think of using twitter as an immediate live platform of what is being said about you, your organization, products feedback, surveys etc, the extent is truly unlimited. You can almost throw out some content or a product and ask for immediate feedback, how cool is that?
3. Gives you great insight into market research for products and services on what is being said in the twitter interface, again priceless information that would have cost you much more money doing it traditionally through follow up phone calls and snail mail etc.
4. A way of extending your reach from your own content blogs and websites to a community on twitter
5. You can also promote update and offers to your target audience through your tweets, although this is subjectively successful, as many people using twitter overuse this for plugging their offers especially for direct messages.
So get your priorities under your belt and figure out why and how you are going to use twitter. This will give you a great consistency in what you are doing and when you reach out to people they can have a level of expectancy.
If you have a business that needs a support application think of using twitter!
With advent of customers who bought product tweeting issues to other customers the obvious was about to happened. Companies simply had to have a presence on twitter and be a support desk directly answering the issues arising. So if you fit that bill here’s what you should be doing:
Create a company support account and give it a company branded avatar. It’s worth creating your company avatar to show transparency and that you are that you are the real deal. Also make sure that you name says something like support@yourcompany. This way different people on support can use the account or if more dedicated support you can use their first names, but knowing the high turnover rate in support it may be better to stick to a generic name.
For the complete guide on twitter for business go get it from my newsletter and a whole load of other free guides just enter your mail address and start getting great info straight to your in box. Next blog post is going to cover how we can use searches in twitter and some important tool that you need to use to make twitter more efficient.
