A little history on Twitter
Twitter seems to be exponentially growing at the moment. From what started as a 'what am I doing' type messaging service, Twitter has crept into some really diverse areas.
Incase you have been hiding under a rock, let me explain a little bit about Twitter:
"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as Tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive Tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications." - source wikipedia
Essentially, think of Twitter as an SMS message but over the internet.
Twitter started life around 2006, but popularity really took off in 2007 - yes it has been around for some time (in internet time scales), and yet it's only in the last year that it appears to have been pushed by all.
If you use any social sites like Digg, Stumbleupon or del.icio.us then you will be aware that during any given day several posts seem to be Twitter related.
We're now seeing (in the UK), our local government business advisors (business link) running courses showing people all about Twitter and how it is the 'thing to get into' with various expos around the country running Twitter keynotes.
I can sit down with Sky News on and throughout the day they will refer to their 'Twitter correspondent' - a Twitter corespondent! Now that's a new job title. Little did the Twitter creators know just where their simple message service would infiltrate.
For my business?
With Twitter reaching so many then it makes sense to explore its usage for your business. However, like all good things Twitter gets spoilt by SPAM. Getting the balance for your business is key to it being useful, but one important must do step is to at least sign-up and protect your brand. If you are called utopia 365 then you want to try and get utopia365 as your user name on Twitter (no spaces allowed). To explain, Twitter accounts have a simple webpage on the Twitter.com website which displays your Tweets (Statuses). This page is called whatever your account name is, so if I sign-up to Twitter as utopia365 then my Twitter page would be found by going to http://www.Twitter.com/utopia365.
I now have the choice to Tweet (and view Tweets) on my webpage, or I can use a Twitter client on my PC,Mac or mobile. A Twitter client is just a piece of software to view and post updates to my Twitter page.
When you sign-up to Twitter you can (and should) fill in your profile. Here you can tell people a little bit about yourself (which is useful for people searching for you or your services/products).
You can also customise your Twitter page by changing your background, font and colours to reflect your brand and identity.
If we look at http://www.utopia365.com and http://www.Twitter.com/utopia365 we know we are talking about the same company.
Contact us if you need help with this.
So with our Twitter account we can now post messages and hopefully people will be interested.
What to write?
This really depends on what your business is. To some just letting people know what you are up to (perhaps what project you are working on or if you are at an expo) will do. An online shopping site might want to let you know about special offers etc. that you may have. This was bordering on the SPAM lines several months ago but it is generally accepted now that if people are following you it's because they want to know whether you have a good deal or not. It's nice to offer vouchers or discount codes to your followers.
Others who offer a service such as IT Support might want to talk about recent IT related news, quick fixes for common problems or perhaps some performance tips. This tells people you know what you are talking about and are willing to help/approachable. Whilst it might not directly result in a sale, it will enhance your reputation and that's something worth achieving.
Perhaps you have job vacancies in your business? Tweet it and you will find a cheap, but popular way to recruit.
There is a great article in the New York Times talking about how Twitter may start allowing easy purchasing, shopping reviews and more.
Is it working?
If you are going to 'Tweet' then you'll want to measure if it's helping. There are a couple of ways to help achieve this:
1) When posting links, here use a URL shortening service which logs clicks such as U2W3.
2) Ensure your analytics can track and filter traffic sources (i.e. your Twitter page).
Applying the above when I post a link on Twitter, before shorten it using a service like U2W3. Lets say I want to post about "http://utopia365.blogspot.com/2009/06/internet-in-your-pocket.html" - using U2W3 I generate a URL which points to the above but gives me a shorter URL "http://www.u2w3.com/182b5".
That's not the most useful part though. When someone clicks this link it gets logged, tracked and I can see people are actually looking at what I have posted:
Looking in Google I can see that Twitter is also one of my traffic sources, so my Twitter account is indeed drawing new visitors.
Steps
1) Sign up to Twitter and configure/customise your account
2) Signup to a URL shortening service such as U2W3
3) Ensure you have some analytics such as Google
4) Ideally use a Twitter client such as TweetDeck, Nambu or Twitteriffic. There are lots of advantages to using these but that's another article
5) Tweet (ensuring links are produced from a service like U2W3)
6) Monitor your followers and follow others with relevance.
7) Use a service like http://monitter.com/ or http://Twittermass.com to help with step 6.
A miracle answer?
Don't believe the hype. It's very rare to have an overnight success using Twitter. Building a solid marketing campaign through Twitter with useful information and worthy followers will take time. Stick with it, nurture it and watch it develop. You will make mistakes. We're first to admit that our own Twittering needs to be cleaned up and brought back on track.
Need help?
Contact us
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