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Welcome to the second installment of my 10 part series, How to Use Twitter for Your Business.

Picking a User name

The very first part of using twitter, once you have decided to use it for your business, is registering a user name.  There are a few things to keep in mind when coming up with a user name.  First of all, you should use your real name.  Of course, you are probably not the first company with your name, so this probably won’t be the last step in your search for a user name.  If your business name itself isn’t available, then just choose anything that is close to it.  Add “Inc”, “ORG”, or “official” to the user name to diversify your search.

Don’t make your tweets protected!

If you make your tweets protected, then only those you authorize to see your tweets will see them.  You are going for public exposure here, so enabling your tweets to be protected is counterproductive to your goal.

Enable Cell updates?

Well this option is up to you. Enabling your cell for updates not only means that you can send updates to Twitter via SMS, but also anyone who directly messages you will get sent to your phone.  For large companies, you should probably think about disabling the cell updates.  Otherwise, if you are a larger company, you could get SMS messages every other minute, and that can be quite annoying.  For smaller companies, I suggest that you do turn this on and set the cell number to whoever is handling PR in you company.  This way, a PR person has the ability to respond to a direct message faster, giving your company a good reputation for PR.

Tune in next time for an advanced explanation of Twitter Settings Area, part III of X in How to Use Twitter for Your Business

Must I really explain how twitter has exploded?  It has jumped over 400% in userbase this past year, and is talked about on the news probably more than any other website in the world.  More than just a social media microblogging platform, Twitter has become an amazingly powerful business tool.  While companies have started to use Twitter on a more frequent basis, even those who have adopted it have made mistakes in how to effectively use it.

This is what set me out to write a blog series on how to use Twitter for your business.  I hope after reading these posts you can start using Twitter to your advantage, and get the leading edge for your business.

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is what is called a ‘microblogging’ website.  Unlike blogs, microblogs are restricted in the number of letters that can fit in an individual post.  For twitter, your posts, or as twitter calls them, ‘tweets’ can only be 140 characters long.  This creates an interesting dynamic for expressing yourself online, because it doesn’t allow room for padding or extra fluff in an informational post.  Its right to the point, and usually, much less than even the 140 character limit.

Why should I use twitter?  Who cares what I am doing?

Well these are both excellent questions, but I would like to immediately address the latter.  The truth is, that no matter who you are, someone will care about what you have to say.  It’s almost impossible to be on twitter for a week and not get at least one follower.  But this doesn’t even matter, because most people do not use Twitter for its inherent question, “What are you doing?”.  In this blog post, we will be focusing on how to use twitter for your business, not your social life.  So more often than not you won’t be posting anything about what you are currently doing, but rather what your current business has to say to the world.

You should use Twitter because it is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Period.  If you gain enough followers, you at anytime could instantaneously send a message to hundreds of people, and this is the central theme of Twitter: you have a large audience.  With a company blog, your firm doesn’t send out your updated post to everyone who is interested in your business, you are just allowing whoever has subscribed to your blog’s RSS feed.  Plus, your blog entry is long.  Twitter messages are short and sweet and get the message across.  I think we can all agree time is always of the essence in today’s market, and having a short personal message sent to individuals interested in your business is a great method to send a message without loosing interest.  There is no room to loose interest!

There are also alot of applications for the use of twitter.  In addition to the above example of just using twitter for marketing, you could also use it for your firms internal communication.  Giving all of your employees twitter accounts creates a network that is fast, private, short, and concise.

Also, as will be discussed in a future post, one of the greatest uses of Twitter is using it for Public Relations.  Monitoring Twitter with the search function will allow you to know where your product stands, how is your customer support, how many need help with troubleshooting, or who didn’t get your latest newsletter for whatever reason.  These are just examples, but your immediate response to user’s complaining about your company could turn them around to loving your company.

Subscribe to my blog to see the next installment, Getting Started with Twitter.

I know you have all been getting a bit more into twitter, so I thought I would just share some basics with you on how to use ir properly.

Frist of all, when you want to write or mention someone else in the tweet, you type this FIRST ‘@esamek’. The reason why you type it first is because this is the only way for it to be considered a true REPLY, otherwise it won’t show up in your list of replies.

Second, when you start a tweet with ‘@esamek’, only people that know both you and the person you are replying to will see that tweet. So every time you reply properly, you are not tweeting to everyone, just people you know.

Thirdly, you can also send Direct Messages in this format ‘d esamek message goes here’. This will send a tweet straight to that persons cell phone.

Fourth, if you have a Mac, download ‘Twhirl’. Its a really awesome app that you can just run on your desktop and it will sound appropriately for replies, direct messages, and new tweets.

Conclusion:

Here are some strategies to use. Follow other people, even people you dont know. There are alot of interesting people that saw great things that I have personally received alot of value from. Share links to interesting things you find, but don’t do that too much. People don’t like someone who only shares links and doesn’t say anything personable. Also, try and following some news companies. With Twhirl, you can get breaking news faster than Google News.

I know you all think that twitter is stupid, or at least some of you do, but it is rapidly become very powerful. If you have enough people following you, dumb great things can happen.

Things that happened to me:

Solved Comcast Service problems
Reduced Comcast bill by $20
Bought memory for dirt cheap.
Found amazing scripts for my websites.
Found great deals on all kinds of products.
Found great t-shirts
Found people to work with
Got on Sprint VIP list so I can call a direct number, no more waiting to speak to someone.
Found out I was on a podcast
Shared live music shows to an audience of 35 people

Again, its not just a social messaging client, it is a powerful communication tool. You all give me shit about it, but the truth is, when you start to use it you will like it. Honestly, you don’t even have to tweet, you can just follow people, business, and news agencies to find out things that are harder to find faster, and better. Promote your band, or send a message to everyone you know to read, who cares.

Go on and mock me for sending this, but I hope you will all start using twitter more.

My username is, @esamek

love,
evan