Twitter can seem time consuming and difficult for small business owners.

However Twitter is an important part of your online presence. Twitter can help your business to network, gain leads and gain website page rank.

All lead creation.

You can also have a live news feed, keep up to date with an industry and actually have a good laugh.

How to use Twitter for marketing

Used correctly a business website and blog can give a company a strong online presence. Twitter helps to support a website by giving more exposure, can increase traffic to a website and can help with page rank.

What Twitter does not do is create a hard, fast sale after one week of Tweeting.

With social media you must be patient, consistent and actually interact, getting to know your followers.

Like all social platforms Twitter is a place to make new connections. You can be in the right (online) place and the right time, constantly at the forefront of mind.

Twitter for small businesses

Twitter connects you and your business to hundreds of individuals who could be interested in you, your product or service. This could be worldwide or you can stick to your country or surrounding area.

Each Twitter user chooses who they follow. If they have chosen to follow you they are potentially interested in your service or product. Twitter can be a whole new world of trading.

Twitter can reach out to a completely separate audience from your poster or your van. Twitter can grab the attention of people that have never even thought of looking for you.

How do I sign up to Twitter?

If you already have a Twitter account you can skip this section, but there is useful information here on Twitter names.

Ok, so where do you start with Twitter? Sign up for an account via twitter.com.

When choosing your Twitter name refer to your company (i.e. @kaydeeweb) but use your OWN NAME on your profile. Be human, not just a company. People will trust you more if they know who you are and can see your face. No one trusts a logo.

When you create a Twitter account your Twitter name always starts with the @ sign.

More on Tweeting directly to people later.

Setting up your Twitter account for small businesses

Use a picture of yourself or your team as your avatar (the small picture) and focus on your faces. A good, up to date head shot … not one of you from Christmas 1997 in the pub, or your logo. Who wants to speak to a logo? Not me!

Twitter (like all social media) is about building trust and being open.

Your bio is important. It is what people will look at when deciding whether or not to follow you. Make it count. Make it to the point. People don’t study bio’s, they scan them.

Your bio is also searchable within Twitter so think about using some keywords – words that people will use when searching for someone like yourself.

In your bio let people know what you might tweet about too, this helps people to make their ‘following’ decision. Let them know what they will learn if they follow you; people want to learn from you. That is the point of the internet.

Adding your website address in your bio is also useful if you can fit it in.

How do I start Tweeting?

I will do this as a case study instead of instructions. Hopefully it is easier…

James owns a mug company. He manufactures mugs in different designs – including campervans, animal designs, retro designs and lots more. He starts his account on Twitter and calls himself @jamesmugs.

“Mugs” seems pretty boring to tweet about, so we have to get inventive.

So where does James start?

James has to ask himself some questions.

What type of person would be interested in his mugs?

What topics are those people be interested in?

Where could he sell his mugs?

Some of his mugs would be great gifts for camper van lovers and animal lovers. He may even want to target online shops to sell his mugs. He must follow some people to start generating interest.

Finding people to follow on Twitter

You can search to find people by location or by a keyword (or phrase) within Twitter.

By finding and then following them you strike up a relationship and can begin to ‘tweet’ to people who live or work in your catchment area, or are interested your subject.

James logs in to Twitter and types “camper van” into the search box. Lots of Tweets appear by people James doesn’t even know, but they are interested in camper vans so James follows of few of these people, thinking they might like a camper van mug.

He continues his search, this time for “cat lovers” and “dog lovers” – following people that look like they may be interested in buying his product.

He thinks there might be some gift shops out there that would be able to sell his mugs. So he searches “gift shops” in the Twitter search and finds a few, reading their bios to decide if they might be worth following.

Your first Tweet

James creates his first tweet, so that when people come to his page they will at least have something to read.

“My new mug design for #splitscreen camper is ready for the shop floor. A great gift! #campervan”

Tweets can be only 140 characters so you have to be creative and keep your Tweet to the point.

Use keywords you think people might use in their searches. James did well on the Tweet above using ‘splitscreen’ ‘camper’, ‘gift’ and ‘mug’ all in one Tweet.

Tweeting directly to someone

If someone wants me to see their Tweet or wants to mention me in their Tweet they would write @kaydeeweb. E.g. “@kaydeeweb is brilliant!”

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NCS.Technology