How To Use Twitter for Your Small Business

1. HOW TO USE TWITTER FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS PowerHomeBiz.com

2. Understand What Twitter is All About • View Twitter as a community, and it is all about how you engage this community and dialogue with them • Success depends on how well you create value with the quality of your tweets and interaction

3. Set Your Goals for Using Twitter To showcase your knowledge and expertise To reach out to other people in your sector and connect with other people with similar interests To communicate with existing customers To increase audience, generate traffic, backlinks of your site. To give a “human face” to your business To check on what other players in your industry, including your competition, are working on.

4. Consider carefully what your Twitter ID will be • Your Twitter ID is part of your brand. It is what you will be known for in Twitter. • Your best choices typically are: • Your name if you want to establish yourself as an expert and start creating your personal brand; • Name of your business, which works well if this is a business account; • Keyword rich Twitter ID: ideal if you want to be visible searches for keywords of your niche (just look at the success of those who use the keywords in their Twitter ID or bio in terms of number of followers) • Your goal should be to become visible when people interested in your keywords do a Twitter people search • Brand your Twitter profile page: include your logo, color palette, key information about you or your web site

5. Twitter IDs of Small Business Users The government’s Small Business Administration uses the keyword approach with the username “SmallBusinessAd” and Name as “Small Business”. SBA is used in the icon image as well as web URL Ranked #1 for “internet marketing” on Twitter search, Success_Search lists as his name the keyword “Internet Marketing” Ranked #1 for “small business” on Twitter search, sbbuzz uses the name “Small Business Buzz” while using their site name as their Twitter username Ranked #1 for all the keywords used in their Name - “SEO,” “PPC” and “SEM”. Also fills their bio with keywords

6. Examples of Profile Pages CNN Breaking News – logo and brand colors RussFilice – profile page includes branding, name of business and contact information Southwest Airlines – logo, brand colors, most recent recognitions, other ways to connect with the company NY Times Small Business – uses their logo as the profile wall paper

7. Plan What You are Going to Tweet Articles or blog posts that you have written Articles, news items or blog posts that may be of interest to your followers Tips Quotes New information about your business and product, including press releases, announcement of events and product features Offers and discounts Customer service responses Post a question to your followers Comments on what other folks have posted, starting a dialogue with other users

8. Small Business Entrepreneurs on Twitter We use the business name “powerhomebiz” as the Twitter ID but use a more keyword intensive “Home Business Info” as name to be searchable for our main keyword “home business”. Photo and real name of our editor is included in the bio. Our tweets include links to articles of all our sites and blogs. We also engage our users and routinely thank those who retweet our posts, mention us or post our articles

9. Small Business Entrepreneurs on Twitter KnowsEbay (Norb & Marie Novocin) run a 12 year eBay family business. They are presently writing a book on selling on eBay They successfully use Twitter to establish themselves as experts on using eBay to sell by posting eBay Hints others can learn from.

10. The Strategy of Gaining Followers • Your popularity depends on the size of your network outside of Twitter: small business owners with limited exposure and no brand names may find it harder to get more followers quickly • Get users to know you: fill out your bio with your web site, adding keywords to help you show up in search • Remember: It’s the quality, not necessarily the quantity of the followers • Better to have followers interested in what you have to say, than spammers or those merely concerned with growing their Twitter followers • Avoid the get-5000-Twitter-followers-instantly tools

11. How to Get More Followers • Put your Twitter profile everywhere: • Email signatures • Facebook/Plaxo/LinkedIn and other social media • Put a Twitter badge on your web site or blog (Follow Me plugin for Wordpress) • Add a Tweetmeme widget in your site or blog • Bring your Twitter profile in the offline world: put it in your business cards, mention it in your podcasts or speeches • Write quality content – consistently • Study the top Twitter users in your niche and look at how they tweet. Use Twitterholic.com to find Twitter users or search for these users on Twitter • The question of reciprocity: avoid auto-follow • Use Direct Message (DM) with caution: users hate receiving « spam » thank-you-for-following DMs

12. Why You Need to be in Twitter Search One of the best ways to increase your followers is to be found in the Find People search of Twitter. Arranged by the number of followers, with the most at the top, most users looking for people to follow will go through several pages looking at users who share their same interests. Make sure that your name will be included in the search results for your keywords. For example: When searching for “social media,” the top results are the Twitter users who have incorporated the term “social media” either in their user name or name.

13. How to Get More Followers • Follow other users, starting with those in your niche • But you don’t really need to follow just to get followers, though it is certainly a faster way to get more followers • Watch out for your ratio of followers and following (don’t follow too many people at once, or you’ll get banned) • Get yourself listed in Twitter directories, such as WeFollow.com, Twellow.com, JustTweetIt.com and Geofollow.com • Participate in trending topics, making sure you’ve got something worthwhile to say (not just spamming)

14. Increase the Visibility of Your Tweets • Tap the power of hashtags #, which allows you to reach users interested in the topic – including those who are not following you. • Research the most popular hashtags for your topic/s • Use Twubs.com, Twemes.com or Hashtags.org to find the right hashtags to use • You can track popularity of hashtags through sites such as Monitter.com and Twitterfall.com. Twilert.com allows you to receive daily alert of the use of a specific hashtag. • Most important: Don’t overuse hashtags

15. Get Retweeted (RTs) • RTs are the fastest way to spread your message on Twitter • Depends on how contagious and viral your content is, not necessarily how many followers you have • Most retweeted content are those that are new and unique • Post pictures, which can prove to be very viral • RTs occur much more frequently between 3 pm – midnight, with Friday registering as the day when most RTs occur • Ask for a retweet • Send a direct message (DM) to your contact • Beg for a retweet, adding « Please Retweet » to your tweets, which is proven to actually work

16. Sources PowerHomeBiz.com: 20 Tips on How to Use Twitter for Your Small Business http://www.powerhomebiz.com/blog/2009/12/how-to-use-twitter-for-your-small-business/ Dan Zarella, The Science of Retweets http://www.danzarella.com Mashable.com: 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends http://mashable.com/2009/04/04/twitter-trends/ TechCrunch: 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followershttp://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/

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