How to use and manage your Twitter account

Twitter is another HUGE Social Media platform and a very powerful marketing tool. People go to Twitter to share snippets of information and in turn, learn from other users. Twitter users are hungry for new information, opportunities, services and products.

If your business is not part of this huge exchange of information you really are missing out on two massive opportunities – to grow your business and to improve it.

Our Twitter top tips!

• The Twitter community is focused on interaction with real people. If you continually post a link to your website – “Please look at my website – www.vaccodadesign.com” this isn’t going to get you anywhere and you won’t build your reputation on Twitter. There is a limit to the amount of characters you can use on Twitter, so be sure to offer people messages (also known as tweets) that contain something worth reading, and if it contains a link make sure it is worth clicking on. A good tweet would be; “We have a new blog on using Social Media effectively – read this here Vaccoda Design Blog”.

• When setting up your Twitter profile, remember to include a good quality image of your business logo. You can also add a background image of your choice to your twitter page.

• Remember to contain relevant business information – include a brief introduction that covers what you do/sell and where you are located. You are limited to the amount of characters so keep it to the point and relevant.

• Include your website in your Twitter profile – after all you want people to be able to find you online.

• When you start to build your followers, engage with them by re-tweeting some of their relevant/important messages to your followers – this helps to build a relationship between you and the other twitter user and it will be likely that they will re-tweet your messages to their followers in future. Re-tweeting is simply tweeting their message to your followers – and its known as a “Re-tweet”.

• In addition to the above point, it is just as important to acknowledge new followers and others that re-tweet your message – “@vaccodadesign – thanks for the follow / re-tweet!” is all it needs to be.

• To ensure that another Twitter follower knows you are including them in, or directing a message to them in your tweet, you need to include an @ symbol before their username – for example; @vaccodadesign – by doing this your message will show up in their user interaction list. Interaction like this alerts other users to activity they might want to know about, such as when you re-tweet their message or you follow them.

• Following on from the above point – follow others – this is vital to the success of your Twitter presence. A good starting point is to follow other local businesses in your area. It can also be helpful to look at the followers of other local businesses and follow those businesses as well. As you follow more and more people/businesses, you will begin to see the number of “followers” you have increase.

• Use hashtags in your post. We have written another blog on hashtags – you can read it by clicking the following link: How to hashtag like a pro!

• If you assign someone to post twitter messages on your behalf, remember that Twitter is a powerful platform that spreads information across many people very quickly, therefore always make sure that the messages that are sent are compelling, newsworthy and interesting and the person sending tweets on your behalf can be trusted!

• It should also be said that when sending tweets you need to be as good at listening as you are writing – no-one likes a badly mis-spelt message no more than being ignored – you MUST check your messages and ensure that you answer any enquiries that may come from potential customers.