How can a new business use twitter?

[CharlieB]

How can a newly established business benefit from twitter and facebook? My main worry is how it will get followers and fans in the first place. I currently have a facebook account but not a twitter one so I know very little about twitter. Also once you establish followers and fans, what is the best way to interact with them? Should it be constant market research or just interacting with customers by telling jokes, for example.

Many Thanks

Charlie

[dvdreplication]

Twitter can be one of the best option to increase the quality traffic for your websites.

[rogercbryan]

I would recommend Twitter as part of a package. Let me explain- Twitter in of itself is a great marketing tool but you need to know how to use it. What I've started doing for all my clients is recommending a WordPress Blog that is linked to your Twitter Account. The blog is then placed at the bottom of your home page (example: Car Donation : Automobile Donations : Car to Charity : Donate a Used Cars : Donating a Vehicle : CharityDispatch.com). Every time you make a post to your blog the title flows to Twitter. You then anchor text three keywords in the blog post to a landing page inside your site or to your home page. This is circular marketing that creates a sales channel inside your Twitter posts as well as creating a link building strategy. We've only been using this system for about 45 days but we have already seen about 10% new traffic to our site just from Twitter.

I'm not ready to start selling this service but I will be soon. You can check out one of my Twitter Accounts that is having a great deal of success with this - bloggennetwork

PM me if you have any more questions!

[DebbieTimmins]

In addition to rogercbryan's great advice, you only really get benefits out of Twitter if youtake the time to give back. Twitter works best when people feel they have a personal connection to your brand. Be prepared to actively engage with your followers and other people in your target audience as well.

Spend an 30-60 mins a day just replying to other people's tweets and you'll develop much higher quality connections. I know that if I see a twitter stream entirely composed of blog post links, I'll dismiss it as a spam account and move on.

[lorenzlammens]

Hi Charlie,

Here is my 2 cents (I didn't include any links out because you can get those on the blog post, didn't feel like duplicating the work...)

The basics

Create a professional twitter page (and if you have an interesting background, submit it to Twitter background).

Download an application like Tweet Deck. It will allow you to tweet from your desktop and to better organize tweets, track who responded, who retweeted you, etc.

Set up your blog to create automated tweets each time you post with Twitterfeed.

Start with connecting to people who are big twitterers in your industry. Starting conversations with them will get you noticed by their followers. Make sure that the conversations are valuable, interesting or entertaining. If you're not sure who to follow, use a service like Mr. Tweet.

If your business is local, find local people to follow. A great service to find local tweeters is Loca Follow.

If people retweet your post, thank them. Automatically follow them after 3 retweets. That is called twitequette and will increase your likeability on twitter. Don't forget that to get you have to give.

Periodically search for mentions of your company by doing a twitter search. Start conversations with the people that retweet you.

Retweet interesting tweets from others, promote them and they will promote you.

Tweet interesting links and tweets.

If you can, be funny.

Tweet during peak hours.



Making it viral

Make your tweet virus worthy. Don't write this tweet: "How to write interesting tweets" but write "How to write magnetic tweets that can get you 1000's of followers". The second tweet has energy and mentions a desire that most twitter users share: increasing their followers. If you can make it less cheesy, be my guest, but this stuff does work.

Use twitter to expose your ideas to those twitter users who need it or would appreciate it. Tweet it to them, and if they start a conversation, engage.

Give your promoters a way to easily tweet your idea or blog post. Add a tweetmeme button to your post for instance.

Try to create virus worthy ideas or blog posts that build up and spread over multiple days. Make it as interactive as possible, allow users to comment, vote or do something else. Make it communication worthy.

Keep relationships with those people that actively engaged and engage them for future virus worthy ideas.



Twitter for business

Search for "I need *product*" or "my *product* sucks". Replace *product* with what you offer of course.

Research the twitter followers of your competitors and start relationships with them.

[stri8ed]

lorenzlammens

Many thanks for that highly informative post.

Can you elaborate on starting conversations with other users related to your product. Also technically speaking, how do you start a conversation with another twitter user?
And finally, any advice on getting your first followers?

Thanks again.

[Lambo]

good stuff!

[lawinc]

Professionals and consultants have had the most impact at Twitter; most businesses are still trying to figure out how to use Twitter as a communications tool. If you’re not a one-person shop, here are a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing:

* A restaurant tweets their daily specials
* A ticket agency tweets about-to-expire tickets
* A realtor tweets new homes on the market
* A chamber of commerce tweets local events and promotions.

[nocci01]

a smarter way to tweet is to tweet interesting statements that are not commercialized...you want people to read your tweets...not X you from their list. any long posts...you can use bit.ly or su.pr to post shortened links. it's a great way to brand yourself but you'll definitely want to get some great mentorship on this topic. be creative!

go to www.tweetdeck.com - it allows you to post on twitter and facebook at one time

[YoungChris]

I am a professional IT consultant, so I will offer you what I can. It is very true that the majority of businesses have not discovered the benefits of Twitter, beyond simply communicating with potential customers or advertising. The following are two case study examples of how we pitched to businesses to use Twitter, and the results:

I met with a local restaurant owner who's restaurant was near a college. He said the majority of his clients are in college and they place many delivery orders. I told him he should use Twitter for people to place delivery orders and carryout orders. If he did this, it would free up his employees from the phones, cutting costs, and speed up the process of placing a delivery order. So I set everything up for him to be able to do this, and he has told me in recent weeks it has really helped his business and made it more efficient.

Another example is a jewelry store owner I recently worked with. He has a luxury jewelry brand that people can collect and add on to. However, he said many of his customers call everyday to see if a certain piece is in stock. He said it does use up time the employees have because often customers will name off numerous style numbers that the employees must look up. We pitched to them that they create a Twitter search feed. By using hashtags in certain posts, we achieved this goal. The employees go and post whenever a new bead comes in, and their customers go and look at the posts. We organized these into a single page using hashtags to make it easier for his customers to find, and they do not need a Twitter account to view it. He said it has cleared up phone time and many customers have commented on how beneficial it is.

So I hope these examples help you understand the potential value in Twitter. It is something that can be used for much more than just communicating, but businesses have to find what that is, and how it works for them. Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like to know more. I would be happy to help you out. Below are some more links which may help you:

Techknowledgey Solutions | Social Media Marketing


Techknowledgey Solutions | Artisans

Techknowledgey Solutions | Blog

[Justin.Dupre]

Its important to subscribe those social network media to your site. Write update and special promotions and such once you have some followers. Good luck

[nikkyn]

Twitter and Facebook are helpful.