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Social networking: How to utilise Twitter for your business
Most people who first learn what Twitter is would believe that it's yet another time consuming; sidetracking, social networking site that should not have any real place in the business world. The problem is many of these people have not yet discovered the many uses Twitter could actually provide for a business.
The following scenarios state some typical opinions about Twitter:
"Twitter! - I've got enough problems at the moment and you're telling me that another social networking site will help!"
"Don't waste my time! - Twitter simply won't help me!"
"Don't ask me how the project is going - it's on its way to being overdue... I am going to have to contact all my hard-to- reach colleagues over the weekend again!"
It is understandable how Twitter would take up some amount of time, be slightly leading away from more industrious work but despite all this, if used in the correct way from a business perspective, Twitter can be a somewhat efficient, constructive and resourceful marketing tool.
Some of the main functions that Twitter provide include enabling employees to connect with customers and business partners online, arrange meetings (Tweetups), get feedback from people concerning business ideas, 'follow' people and send messages to them, keep an eye on your business produce and blogs. Apart from the excellent business facilities, Twitter also helps business employees to see other people's views, and get inspirational ideas from their unique outlook of their life and business.
This How-to-guide will help you to take advantage of these proficient features and to explore the overall benefits of using Twitter in a business.
How-to-Twitter for business
If your company agrees to use Twitter for business you must make sure that a 'network' for the business has been created. You should create a profile with a short biography about yourself and your business. It should promote business websites and also talk about you as an individual.
The Twitter search engine is a very useful tool which picks out words from other tweets that you are searching for in the public domain. You can search for your name and what others have Twittered about you. You can also track down work colleagues and look for competitors and follow them. This search engine can also be used as a great marketing tool to find target audiences as well as people with common interest. For example, if a person has tweeted that they have discovered that their car had been stolen, an insurance company could use this to their advantage by sending those people a message asking if they would require their services.
You can use this tool to your advantage by looking for problems that people have that you may know how to solve and so then you can help or give them advice. This will demonstrate to other people your helpful nature. There are more tweets building up even after you have searched for them. Type "#more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them."
When writing tweets, demonstrate that you are confident in what you are discussing and aim to get to your message across in the limit of 140 characters. The messages you send should be appropriate and also relevant. A helpful tip would be to use a service such as TinyURL.com or doiop.com which allows you to shorten URLs if you are posting them into your message.
When using Twitter you can reply or 'Retweet' to messages which are interesting or informative from other Twitters. In the process of 'Retweeting' you can demonstrate that you are experienced and successful in what knowledge you have by replying to other people's questions and helping them. It is also important to know this is the same for asking questions. It is just as important to ask questions to get feedback from the experiences of others.
You can talk about common interests as well as important elements of your business. Twitter enables people to build relationships through tweets and conversations. This is yet another positive element of Twitter; it incorporates ways in which you can communicate with customers and answer some of their questions. This way, you are providing them with good customer service and it is much more likely that would do business with you.
Follow people who are good competitors; see what their interests are, what they discuss and also who they follow. Follow people in your business and those whom have similar ways of thinking and are interesting to you. This will help you to be able to have a conversation about topics you find intriguing and at the same time you will be able to learn from them. It is also important to follow those who are thoughtful, sincere and inspirational.
When posting tweets make sure that they are not all about business, add some personal interest tweets too. Ensure that you don't get carried away by promoting your business. It will not be much appreciated by your followers and will be treated like spam. Try to use minimal links when advertising business websites and also write some interesting and relevant information linking your view with the business.
The overall advantages of using Twitter in a business are:
Shifrah Uddin
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