Twitter 101

Created that company twitter account but not sure where to go with it from here? Here's our handy guide to Twitter.

Who are you talking to?
Don't start tweeting without figuring out who your target market is. Are you talking to men, women, or both? How old are they? What are their likes and dislikes? What benefit are you providing to them? Answering these questions will help set the stage.

What do you want them to do?
The number one thing you want them to do is engage! This can mean retweeting, favoriting tweets, tweeting @ your account, visiting your website, learning more, introducing them to your brand. Each of these things may eventually lead to your followers becoming clients.

What do you want to share with them?
The most important thing to know about sharing information on twitter is that you want to share timely and relevant content with your followers. This doesn't mean you can't be silly now and then (see the below tweet by ModCloth, a clothing retailer), but you generally want to cater to your audience. Relevant articles from trusted authorities, informative how-to videos, product photos, and funny jokes are all great to include in your daily tweeting regimen.

Tweets with rich media content (photos, videos, and article snippets) often get two or three times the engagement as regular tweets. Since Twitter doesn't automatically allow rich media in tweets, you will have to use a few workarounds here. Sign up for TwitPic and share YouTube videos under "Share This Video" by clicking the Twitter icon and following prompts.

What are Hashtags?
A hashtag is a word or set of words preceded by a pound sign, such as #socialmedia. Add them to your tweets to join a conversation on that topic!

How Often Do I Tweet?
Start out by tweeting 5 times per day. As you get more familiar with the platform, try different numbers and consult your analytics to determine the optimum number of tweets per day. 

How Do I Deal with Negative Tweets?
Not everyone will be a happy customer. Try to deal with these tweets by tweeting back at them immediately and directing them to an email address, live chat, phone number, or other forum for someone to address their complaint. Always stay polite and professional!


Good luck in the Twitterverse - we're rooting for you. Happy tweeting!

Getting the Most Out of Twitter

While most businesses know that they need to create a Twitter account as part of their standard social media campaign, there are some companies that aren't getting the most they can out of their accounts. Tweeting boosts brand engagement and brand recognition, so it's important to make it a part of your daily social media activities, but you also shouldn't forget to strategize when tweeting. Tweeting during the weekend can often get you more attention than tweeting during the week, and companies should keep their tweets under 100 characters to encourage easy retweeting. Try to use no more than 2 hashtags per tweet, as too many hashtags can decrease engagement, and don't be too afraid to ask for retweets occasionally on more important tweets.

As for SEO, it's important that when linking to your twitter account that you link to the correct URL. Twitter creates duplicate content, so it's best to refer to this helpful SEOmoz blog post when deciding which twitter URL to link to.

Twitter Advertising for Businesses of All Sizes

Are you looking for a new advertising tactic to test for your business? Twitter might just be the answer…

Beginning in late March, Twitter will roll out new self-serve advertising products, available to businesses of all sizes, called Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. This is all in an effort to continue building out some form of a revenue model for the business, which they have appeared to struggle with. According to a report by eMarketer Digital Intelligence, Twitter’s ad revenue growth will fall from the triple digits last year to “mere” 83% growth in 2012, reaching nearly $260 million worldwide by the end of this year. I still think Twitter is a viable platform for some businesses, and depending on the cost of this advertising, it may very well be worth the test.

Twitter has partnered with American Express as described below (extracted from Twitter’s blog post):

We’ve partnered with American Express to make it easy for small business owners to advertise on Twitter. American Express Cardmembers and merchants based in the U.S. will be invited to try this new advertising solution before anyone else, and American Express will give $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 eligible businesses to sign up.

Starting today [February 17th], American Express Cardmembers and merchants can register to participate in the initial introduction of this new offering via ads.twitter.com/amex.

We will launch this new offering more widely later this year.

Does this form of advertising make sense for your business? Please describe your Twitter business success stories below in the comments.

Statistics on Twitter’s Growth: Harnessing Twitter’s Reach for Your Business Needs

As part of their five year anniversary, yesterday Twitter blogged about the massive amount of growth they have experienced since inception. From the first tweet, through now well over a billion tweets, there is no denying Twitter’s growth. There are many ways to utilize Twitter for your business and harness its reach, depending on what your objectives are with the social platform.

Below are a few statistics Twitter released to illustrate its growth trends:

#tweets

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
• 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
• 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
• 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.

#accounts

• 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
• 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

#employees

• 8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

Are your customers hanging out on Twitter?

If so, at a minimum you should at least “listen” using tools such as Twitter Search. You want to be where your customers are, interacting with them. Although it’s easy to use Twitter as a broadcast channel, remember it’s important to add a human factor to your communications.

Happy Birthday Twitter from @erikabarbosa!

Image credit: Rosauraochoa

How to Make the Most Out of Twitter for Businesses

Last week Twitter announced the revamp of their Twitter site dedicated to business users, Business.Twitter.com. The site provides a dedicated resource for learning Twitter basics and best practices, how to optimize your Twitter activity and advertisement opportunities for businesses. The newly revamped website does a great job in providing this information in an easy to understand format. If you are looking for additional details in utilizing Twitter advertising or simply tips for enriching your community/following, this site proves to outline just that.

One main advertisement feature that really appeals to me is that Twitter is building out the ability to track performance via an analytics dashboard (real-time). Without this performance tracking capability, I wouldn’t be interested in exploring their advertisement opportunities (or at least until tracking was enabled). Although many of their promoted features are in beta, you can still express your interest to obtain further updates.

Twitter encourages you to follow @TwitterBusiness to keep up with the latest on how brands, businesses, schools, and community groups are using Twitter.

How is your business making the most out of Twitter?

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Rockstars Of Twitter Webinar

Jay Berkowitz will be hosting a free webinar along with Warren Whitlock, Gail Goodwin and @Iconic88 to discuss the best ways of doing business and building your personal brand on Twitter. The event will take place on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM EDT and to register, please visit; The Rock Stars of Twitter Webinar.

The Twitter Beginner's Guide - - plus Meet the Founders of Twitter

We have been getting a ton of questions about how to Twitter. So we wrote the Twitter Beginner's Guide, Ten Tips How to Use Twitter for Business and Personal Branding.

For a deeper understanding of where Twitter came from and where they are going here are two recent videos from the Co-Founders. Biz Stone reveled that they are "Building Value and in the Future they will Build Revenue, with testing to commence this year"

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on Stephen Colbert's show:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Biz Stone
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Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams at the Amazing TED Conference: