Social media marketing using Twitter doesn’t have to be difficult. Follow the six steps below to create, post and manage your twitter account and it will be easy. From deciding what profile name to choose, to sending out your very first tweet, you won’t believe how easy it is to get started with Twitter.

1. Get your free account- Go to twitter.com and click on the join button
2. Choose an appropriate username or brandable slogan
3. Complete and Update your Twitter profile.
4. Follow people of interest to you.
5. Connect with others – Send out your first tweet
6. Participate in the conversation

Some suggestions to make the most of your social media marketing on Twitter:

Choosing a unique username

The purpose of using twitter for social media marketing is to get your name out there, build your brand and to connect with others that have similar interests. So when choosing a username, try to use your own name or brandable slogan so that you can build an identity that others will see as an expert in your niche.

Personalize your profile

Personalize your Twitter profile by adding your name and a current photo; be sure to include your website/blog address (so others can learn more about you or your product or company). Include a brief bio about yourself that uses keywords that will associate you with. To personalize your profile even further you can change your background. TwitBacks.com is a great site that offers a ton of different templates to enhance your twitter profile page and make it more personalized.

Connect with others in your industry or niche

Don’t be shy, get it out there. Others will interact with you when you tweet about something that they have an interest in too. Find out who’s who in your industry or niche and follow them. An awesome site I like to use to find industry leaders is http://www.twellow.com.  You can search the twellow website using keywords that relate to your niche and find out what is being said about your industry and who is saying it. You can also find people on twitter that have interests that are similar, or follow users that are suggested from Twitter by clicking on the find people tab at the top of your twitter home page.

Participate

Be relevant, share, contribute and respond to the tweets of others. Ask questions and evoke responses. Not only tweet about your own contributions, retweet (RT) other tweets that are valuable to you and your niche. Promoting or attributing others when appropriate can help you to build a following faster as you will be considered trustworthy, knowledgeable about your subject and are portraying someone who is not just out to get you to buy something.

To Connect with Urvi:
Facebook: http://facebook.com/urvimehta
Twitter: http://twitter.com/urvimehta
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/urvimehta

You may be wondering how a business owner can possibly reach a target audience on Twitter. Twitter directories to the rescue. When thinking about social media and how you can use it to build your business and brand, Twitter directories play an important role to finding like-minded Twitter users. Adding yourself to Twitter directories will help you to find those you want to follow and they in turn will most likely follow you.

How do Twitter directories work?

Twitter directories work by allowing a person to search for people based on certain criteria. The criteria may be their geographical location or their interests that they have associated themselves with by using tags when they listed themselves.

What Twitter directories should I use?

Twitter directories are plentiful and they can differentiate from all inclusive to specialized practices such as Legalbirds.com, a directory devoted to lawyers, academics, and or legal professionals on Twitter. You can check them all out, but here are the three top directories that I would recommend: Twellow.com, Wefollow.com and Geofollow.com.

Twitter directories are very much like an updated version of the yellow pages. Twellow.com describes itself as the “Twitter Yellow Pages” and does resemble the yellow pages somewhat with the color theme they use. Twellow.com also allows you to sort your search criteria to really pinpoint who you are looking to connect with. Sort by username, registered users, or followers count.

Another Twitter directory that is useful in helping you to build your following is Wefollow.com. Wefollow.com is very easy to use. Listing yourself can literally take seconds. Wefollow.com also makes it easy to find others in your niche that you may want to follow. To find a person that loves bikes and biking, all you have to do is enter the tag word bikes. The auto fill will help you to find the right tag word and will also show you how many tweeters are listed under that tag. Search results are listed in the order beginning with the highest number of Twitter followers.

Geofollow.com is a location based Twitter directory where you list Twitter username by your location. You can search the directory by city, state, country, tag, name, twitter username, or keyword. This type of directory is especially helpful in locating local followers and or prospects to connect with.

Never before have we been able to connect so easily with others who have similar interests, to both promote our communities as well as our businesses. Twitter directories are far from the old fashioned yellow pages that the consumer searched through page by page looking for a business to serve their needs. And best of all their free. What are you waiting for? Get yourself listed and take advantage of the opportunity of connecting with others through Twitter directories, it just may improve your business.

Connect with me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/urvimehta

Here is great video from Common Craft on Twitter.

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Tip #4: Re-purpose existing content

With taking care of customers, blogging, keeping up profiles on numerous social media sites, all while running a business, maintaining your online presence can quickly become overwhelming. Use tools like Twitterfeed to automatically Tweet content from an RSS feeds of your other blogs or sites, and Alterthingy, another tool that helps you aggregate and repost your content across the multiple sites, and profiles you need to maintain.

In addition, several blogs (Wordpress for example) are building Twitter widgets to be able to display your tweets (and others) on your blog, thus keeping the blog actively changing and a target for better search engine ranking and more active visits.

There are any number of other ways you can use Twitter for Business and this note really only scratches the surface of what is possible. As the popularity of Twitter grows so will the unique and inventive ways of using this innovative tool.

I hope you enjoyed this 4 part post on “How to Use Twitter for Business”

Happy Tweeting…

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Tip #3: Automation (wherever it is appropriate)

Reduce the time it takes you to research what is happening in the Twitterdom, speed up your own Tweeting, get yourself followed automatically, and build ranking faster and easier.   There are several automation type tools available to help build your Twitter for business presence without having to hire a back room full of people:

• TweetBeep –Set up alerts for various keywords, people, different attitudes, and links.

• Search.Twitter.com (used to be called Summize) – Search for your keywords, click a button and you have  a custom RSS feed that you can read via your favorite feed reader, or put on your Google or Yahoo home page. A synopsis available on what’s happening.

• Tweetlater – one of the more versatile tools related to Twitter. A quick list of services include; emailing a digest of Tweets (like TweetBeep), Pre-scheduling tweets to keep your tweet stream flowing, pre-saving Tweets or common snippets of tweets for faster Tweeting, Automating direct messages to people that follow you, setting up an auto-follow and  managing multiple Twitter Ids at the same time.

• Twitscoop – extends what search.twitter.com can do with both real-time searches of specific keywords as well as what the overall Twitterdom is talking about using (the Tweet Cloud). It also shows you the hot trends in the cloud.

• Twellow -  This is another research tool that extends Twitter for business use, Twellow searches people’s profiles or what they are Tweeting about under specific, predefined categories, or a general search.  Twellow will also show you geographically where people are Tweeting from in the US and Canada.

• Remember the Milk (RTM) – A real unique and cutting edge use of Twitter. RTM is a Task management service (set up reminders, tasks, things to do, etc.) for an individual or a small team or business. You can interact with Remember the Milk through Twitter. You simply follow the Twitter ID @rtm and then send it commands like retrieving your current tasks, adding new tasks, setting up automated reminders, even sending tasks to other Twitter users. This is a great adaptation of Twitter for business use.

Stay Tuned for the Last Part…

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Tip #2: Participate (be Relevant, contribute, share, respond)

For a business or business person to be relevant in the Twitter conversation going on, they need to participate. Ask questions and elicit responses; respond to other user’s questions. Tweet not only your own relevant contributions but retweet (RT) other Tweets that you find valuable. Promote and/or attribute others where there’s a reason to do so. You can build a following faster if you appear trust worthy (easiest way to do that is by actually being trustworthy), know your subject matter and don’t look like you are just out the get them to buy something.

The graders and ranking sites look at both your following as well as your activity. There’s a number of search tools that will help you here to see who is talking about what and who is specifically responding to you (for example with @replies). These tools can help you determine where you might want to jump into a conversation and build that relevance. This is important in being noticed by searches from other users. You build following with contribution, relevance, and responsiveness.

The number of keywords in your tweet cloud is also important. Are you an active Tweeter? If so, what are you tweeting about? Are you relatively consistent in what you discuss? There’s a big difference between using Twitter like text messaging and blogging each trip to the grocery store and using Twitter for business with a targeted, specific approach to your online identity and the topics you take on. Again, the grading web sites will pick up on this targeted approach and quickly move you to “elite” status in your chosen keywords if you Tweet with some forethought.

Part 3 and 4 to be released later this week

Follow Urvi on Twitter

Following up from the last set of Social Media Marketing webinars where we covered the basics of Twitter and other Social Media tools and sites, I have been getting questions about using Twitter for business purposes. In response to those questions, I wanted to write out a short list of Twitter for Business best practices and some of the most popular tools that make these practices possible. This list of tools, techniques, and what is possible is changing and expanding almost daily with the explosion of Twitter usage and discussions of Twitter merging with some other site/partner. Thus I expect to stay current on using Twitter for business purposes we will need to repost more on this topic from time to time.

Tip #1:  Be Real
It is important that you completely fill in the registration and profile information when signing up on Twitter. If you set up your Twitter Id as a business name it is less real than using a personal name. If you still want the business name in there, you could possibly add the company after the persons name (like Dell computer has been known to do with names like “PatrickAtDell”). In the profile section, post your website. I wouldn’t recommend a short URL here if you can avoid it since this is your brand and the full link helps in your SEO rankings. Also in the profile section you enter in relevant search terms in your profile description.

With the profile limited to 160 characters, you want to get the relevant keywords included. By doing so you don’t have much space to talk about the business specifically. However you can also squeeze in more content about your business including other websites, urls, logos, or content by uploading a custom Twitter background. Be aware though that the search engines and tools people are using to find you will not pick up words or content located in the background image. That’s why the keywords have to be in your description.

Finally and possibly most important is that you need to upload a picture. People want to see who they are communicating with, even if you are representing a company. If Twitters don’t think you are real, they are less likely to be interested in following you and learning more about your business (we are Twittering for Business here remember). If you try to hide with no picture, just a logo, an incomplete profile or no description, the cynical side of social media marketing will take over, people will assume the worst and they won’t follow you.

Stay Tuned for More…

Follow Urvi on Twitter

For those of you who are on Twitter right now you may have heard about the recent stir with @mattbacak and about his press release talking about his recent accomplishments on Twitter.   With all the hoopla about Twitter Grader and how Matt Bacak was listed as a Twitter Elite, I decided to do some of my own testing to see just how accurate Twitter Grader can be.

On my Twitter profile @UrviMehta when my location was listed at Detroit, MI and I graded my profile I was part of the Twitter Elite with a rank of 6 in Detroit, MI.  However, when I changed my location to Detroit, Michigan (spelling our the entire state name) I am ranked #2 in Twitter Elite for Detroit, Michigan.

Essentially Twitter Grader is more of a “fun” tool in its current ranking measure.  Perhaps Twitter Grader should consider state abbreviations and full spellings of the state names as the same location.  My point is that Detroit, MI and Detroit, Michigan is one in the same and should be one list instead of two separate lists depending on how you spell out your location.