Using Twitter for Business

Be helpful, be informative, be human, and be as responsive as U can

Ways you can use it for business

• Position yourself as an expert
• Promote your company
• Networking
• Generate new business
• Provide useful information
• Stay informed on industry topics
• Media coverage
• Customer service

What to post?

• Business vs. personal
• Compliment others
• Brag on yourself
• Share interesting information from other sources
• Share your news/videos/blog posts
• Answer people
• Ask questions
• Comment on topical news
• Give the inside scoop
• Respond to people who may need your services
• Retweet
• Don’t post “yes” “no” “I agree” “thanks”
• Keep one-on-one personal conversations off Twitter
• Spread out your tweets


5 Things You Can Do Immediately To Engage Twitter For Your Business

• Start adding your blog posts or news releases to expand their reach/readership
• Set up monitoring for mentions of your company or related phrases
• Find 10 people a day for the next week to follow that relate to your business
• Add Twitter to your email signature and contact us page
• Use Twitter to seek media coverage by following @skydiver and @profnet

Maximizing Twitter

• Link to social networks
• Cross promote
• Badge/feed on your website/blog
• Add to your email signature or in any list of ways to contact you
• Tweeple

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Using Twitter- The Basics

Updating your account -- with a status message or "Tweet" -- is as simple as typing what you want to say to the Twitter community and clicking send. The service is opt-in, which means you have to choose to “follow” a Twitterer to get their updates. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as TWITTERRIFIC or FACEBOOK.

Twitter is about your personality and your brand. You can easily customize the look-and-feel of your profile to better fit your personality and we recommend you do so. You should use your real name so that you’re easy to find on a search and so that your friends will recognize you when you follow them.

When opening an account, you have the option of “protecting your updates” to limit access to your updates. Note that if you protect your updates you will limit the amount of people following you and listening to what you have to Tweet.

What Makes a Good Twitterer:

A good Twitterer stays connected with the conversation; they listen and reply to others, and through doing this they add value to the discussion. When a lot of people first start Twittering, they follow figures with a lot of followers; however, you’ll find that you care more about people who twitter who you already know from other interactions. Often your favorite Twitterers are going to be your favorite bloggers, colleagues, and closest friends in “real” life.

What Makes a Good Tweet:

Be funny. Be snarky. Be helpful. Be authentic.

Sending tweets allows family, friends, colleagues, and even journalists to see what you’re currently doing without having to be contacted individually. Perhaps you just read an excellent editorial on the WSJ that you want to say something about --tweet it and include the link to the story. One of your friends on Twitter just Tweeted a great thought - reply to that person. McCain just released a hilarious new YouTube video -- tweet it and share the link. You just ate an awesome steak at the latest hot spot in town -- tweet it (even upload a picture and link to it if you’d like).

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What Is Twitter? – The Basics

You’ve probably heard about Twitter (http://twitter.com) but find yourself not really understanding what it is - why it matters - and how to use it.
To help answer these questions, we've written this Twitter 101 Guide to better explain the service, its benefits, and then offer a few tips and tricks that you may find helpful to you and your organization.

So what is twitter?

The official Twitter definition:

It is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Twitter is a free service blending instant messaging, social networking and wireless communication through computer and cell phones to distribute 140-character messages about what someone is doing.

A person opens a Twitter account and invites friends to join or connect with other members. A Twitterer gets a personal Web page that shows each post. One can “tweet” just to friends or read what others are saying about themselves. Twitter says the service is for “staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing.”

Twitter was launched in July 2006 and won the Web Award in the blog category at the 2007 South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas.

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MICROBLOGGING

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140 characters or fewer) or micro media such as photos or audio clips and publish them. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog due in that it is typically more topical, smaller in aggregate file size (e.g. text, audio or video) but is the same in that people utilize it for both business and individual reasons. Many micro-blogs provide this short commentary on a person-to-person level, or share news about a company's products and services.

Micro-blogging is the practice of sending brief posts to a personal blog on a micro-blogging Web site, such as Twitter or Jaiku. Micro posts can be made public on a Web site and/or distributed to a private group of subscribers. Subscribers can read micro blog posts online or request that updates be delivered in real time to their desktop as an instant message or sent to a mobile device as an SMS text message.

The appeal of micro-blogging is both its immediacy and portability. Because posts are so brief (typically 140 – 200 characters), a micro-blogger can update his micro blog often enough to keep readers informed as events, whether large or small, unfold. Anyone with a cell phone can send and receive updates anytime, anywhere. Users can send messages as text, video or audio. Several social networking Web sites, including Twitter, are promoting micro-blogging as a convergence of several types of presence technology. Here's Twitter's self-description: "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?"

A common criticism of micro-blogging is the trivial nature of most posts:

Although microblogging started as a way for young and technologically savvy users to keep in touch, the practice is moving into the mainstream. In the United States, for example, Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards started microblogging details from the campaign trail. Some traditional media organizations, including The New York Times and the BBC, have begun to send headlines and links in microblog posts. Other potential applications of microblogging include traffic and sports updates and emergency broadcast systems.

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