Twitter For Business: A High Level Overview

Today it is no longer enough for businesses to have just a website as their primary means of an online presence.

As a minimum, you also need Twitter.. but ideally a Facebook Page as well, is becoming the norm.

So many businesses are integrating Twitter as an additional marketing channel for their product, as a way to better communicate with customers, as well as for reputation and competition monitoring.

I’m hearing you say,

“This sounds all well and good.. I’ve got my Twitter account, but how do I integrate this into my business? What is the next step?“

I have decided to create a high-level overview of the key components and main steps involved in getting Twitter integrated into your business.. basically an end-to-end solution.

This is by no means a definitive list and components don’t necessarily have to be implemented in this exact order.

If you understand most of these components then you will easily be able to integrate Twitter into your business.

Twitter for Business: A High Level Overview

Create Twitter account

• upload company avatar
• add company Bio
• add company URL

Follow

• know how to follow people
• know how to see who people are following
• know how to see people’s followers
• finding people to follow – in your niche / with similar interests
• know how to unfollow people

Tweeting

• know how to tweet
• know that tweets must be 140 characters or less
• know how to retweet
• understand @replies
• understand mentions
• know how to direct message (DM)
• know how to favourite tweets
• know how to use URL shortening services – bit.ly, su.pr, etc. when tweeting out links
• know how to engage in the conversation
• know how to add value to the conversation
• geotagging
• understanding trends
• understand the benefits of keeping tweets ~120 characters (to allow for retweets to include your Twitter handle)

Filtering

• know how to filter searches and categorize using hashtags
• know how to create groups
• know how to search for information on Twitter
• understanding advanced search
• know how to save searches
• know how to recognize and report spam to Twitter
• know how to block people and bots

Twitter Lists

• know how to create lists
• know how to subscribe to other people’s lists
• know where to find lists to follow – listorious.com

Followers

• know how to build followers
• establishing your presence
• building your reputation and niche expertise

Marketing

• promoting your business
• begin driving traffic to your website
• “as seen on Twitter” promotions and deals
• Twitter discounts
• refer-a-friend

Competition

• know how to monitor your competition
• follow who your competition is following
• know who is following your competition
• know what your competition are saying and promoting
• engage/collaborate with your competition

Twitter Clients

• manage Twitter better by using a Twitter client – Cotweet, Hootsuite
• go mobile and install a Twitter app on your mobile phone

Website

• add Follow Us on Twitter button
• add your Twitter account to your business card, email signature, presentation slides/notes
• add your Twitter account to other social networking sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube
• embed your Twitter stream into your website

Advanced

• know how to use other Twitter tools
• know how to setup Twitter alerts via email
• Automated Twitter tools
• know how to share photos on Twitter
• know how to share files on Twitter
• know how to stream live video on Twitter
• understand API limits
• start using Twitter metrics and statistics
• Twitter tips
• Twitter cheat sheet
• know how to setup multiple Twitter accounts
• know how to setup autofollow and auto-unfollow
• understand how to go beyond the 2000 follower ‘limit‘

Finally..

All the steps listed above may seem quite daunting at first, but after getting your hands dirty by playing around with Twitter for a little while.. they will all become second nature.

This high-level overview will point you in the right direction in getting Twitter integrated into your business. If I have missed out any key components please let me know.

I have had personal experience with implementing all of these components into my own blog, and am confident they can easily be transferred to your own business and own circumstances.

Before long you too will become a Twitter power user!

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