Twitter 101 – Using Social Media as a Business Tool

Lately, you can’t seem to get away from the term “Social Media” or “Web 2.0″. While there are 100’s of Social Media sites, including Facebook, My Space, Twitter and LinkedIn; Twitter seems to be the fastest growing and a medium well worth learning about. Major corporations are on Twitter (Zappos, Dominos Pizza, Dell, Amazon) as are the major news networks.

I think Social Media is growing so rapidly because the Internet can be so impersonal and we miss “human interaction”. Social Media gives us a way to connect with like minded people and to interact with them. One of the byproducts of these interactions can be an increase in business / sales and referrals from people you have made connections with. If you haven’t tried Twitter yet, or haven’t figured out how you can use it, you’ll find the tips below helpful.

How Can You Use Twitter For Your Business?

• Network with other business owners
• Research marketing ideas, trends, and your competition
• Get help / advice
• Improve customer service
• Prospect for new clients
• Increase your search engine rankings
• Drive traffic to your website/blog by posting when new info is added
• Build credibility
• Locate PR opportunities (writers are looking for people to interview on Twitter!)
• Announce special offers, events or awards you have received

Don’t let Twitter intimidate you! Just jump in and give it try . . .

Following are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Decide if you want to use Twitter as a personal or business brand
2. Choose a Twitter ID: YourName, YName, CompanyName, or WhatYouDo
3. Sign-up for your Twitter Account at http://www.twitter.com
   - Twitter will verify that your ID is available to use
4. Find friends/contacts – Twitter can check your email address book to see
   if your contacts are using Twitter
5. Personalize your account – Add your profile info and your photo
6. Personalize your “look” – You can choose a different Twitter look, create
   your own custom look to blend with your website, or choose a free one from
   sites like: http://twitrounds.com/
7. Find people to follow Do a people search by name to find people you know
   in your local area and follow them
   - Search http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/ and http://www.wefollow.com
   to locate people in your area that have a twitter account- Search by keyword to find people discussing topics of interest to you and/or
   your clients (IE: #homeimprovement)
8. Start Tweeting!

Tweet Etiquette:

Treat your “Tweets” like you would a conversation with someone you meet at a networking or social event. Ask questions, answer questions, and add to an existing conversation. Social media is a way to connect to a community. When using Twitter for business, refrain from too many mundane personal posts or outright ads. You want to share useful information and ideas, but don’t want to generate too much “clutter” or blatant self-promotion. You can post links to useful articles and resources that you have found. You can also use the DM – direct messaging – feature to carry on a more personal conversation with an individual, that may not be of interested to the entire community. Twitter posts can only be 140 characters long, so you will want to use one of these sites to shorten long website addresses that you are sharing with others: http://tinyurl.com or http://bit.ly

More Great Twitter Tips:

The tips below are snipped from Stephanie Frank’s blog. I highly recommend that you visit her site and read the complete post . . . she has really put together a great Tweet plan to follow: http://stephaniefrank.com/productivity/10-things-i-learned-on-the-way-to-10000-twitter-followers/

Tip #2 – Have a beginning strategy. I started out doing 3 things: a) Asking a few friends to “show me around” by telling people I was on Twitter. That got the first qualified followers. b) Engaging with people directly and c) Sending quotes. That’s all I knew how to do and it worked to get started.

Tip #3 – Continuously develop your strategy. Today, there are 5 kinds of tweets that I do regularly: a) My own Daily Do It (tips on personal peak performance) b) Retweet things I personally like or are helpful to others c) Engage with others personally d) Links to blog posts and e) Quotes or one-liners.

Happy Tweeting!

Terri Gray

Join me on: Twitter  &

Food For Thought:

“People don’t fail because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.”

~ Les Brown