Twitter:

A Beginner’s Guide

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 A Beginner’s Guide to
Twitter:
How to use Twitter to Promote your Business

You have probably heard a lot about Twitter but like anything, until you know how to use it, it can
seem daunting. This guide will give you a brief overview of Twitter, how to get set up, what to tweet
about and how to increase your number of followers.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Created in March, 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and
Noah Glass, Twitter was launched four months later. By December 2014, there were 280M active
users with 23% of adult internet users having twitter accounts. So you might be asking, why would
my business benefit from using Twitter?

Twitter is a real-time social media platform which you can use to increase your brand awareness,
driving traffic to your website and reaching a wider audience. It’s like micro-blogging or sending
public text messages and like many social media platforms, it has its own language. I’ll begin by
running through a few definitions before showing you how to set up a twitter account and then give
you some tips on how to run a successful twitter campaign as well as sharing some of the risks
involved.

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 DEFINITIONS

Twitter as many of the other social media platforms has its own language. Here are a few definitions
to help you start:

Tweet: a message of up to 140 characters that you send out to your followers

Retweet: sending a tweet you receive to your followers

Followers and Following: as the name suggests, these are people who either follow you or you follow

Direct Messages: Twitter now allows you to send a DM to anyone, even if they don’t follow you
although there is a setting to disable this if you do not want to receive DMs from non-followers. And
they also recently increased the number of characters for a DM to 160

#: Hashtags are used to link together conversations about certain topics

@: Your @username can be up to a maximum of 15 characters and is used to link others to your
profile

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 SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT

Here are some guidelines about setting up a Twitter account:

1. Go to www.twitter.com or download the free Twitter app on your mobile and sign up and
follow the instructions

2. Choose your @username as well as a name to appear next to it. Some businesses use the
same as their @username or something different. If your business’s name is too long or
someone else is already using it, try abbreviating it or varying it slightly

3. Upload a picture of yourself or your brand logo – photos can be in any of the following
formats: JPG, GIF or PNG. The image will appear alongside every tweet

4. Write a profile of your business using no more than 160 characters. Make it clear what you
do and who you are and if relevant include opening hours and the location of your business

5. Include a link to your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find your
website from your Twitter page

6. Use a header image that represents your brand as people who visit your profile page will see
it

7. Customise your profile page: once you’ve set up your account, you can make changes to your
profile page by clicking on “Settings” and then choosing “Design”. This can be anything from
adding a background image to changing the colours of any links to your page

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 TWEETING

OK, so you have set up your Twitter account, but what should you tweet about and when?

1. Style

Think about tweets as a conversation between you and the public so use a conversational style. Make
them authentic and friendly and include a call to action such as “Discover….” – people are curious and
will want to click on the link to see what you are offering them.

2. Content

Here are a few suggestions about what you can write about:

 Include a link to your blog or post on your website and Twitter will automatically alter
it to 22 characters even if the link is shorter than that.

 Share amusing quotes or inspiring speeches

 Always tweet about something that is related to your business. For example, you
might be interested in bee-keeping or politics but don’t share this with your followers

 Respond to your clients’ tweets; hopefully the majority of the comments you receive
will be positive but if you do receive some negative feedback, you could send a DM to
your client and ask them to give you a ring personally so you can sort the problem out

 Share any discounts or offers

 Don’t oversell. People aren’t on Twitter to be sold to, so a softer approach is needed

 Check out the #s that are relevant to your business and get involved in the
conversation.

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 Before using any # in your tweet, always check the content first. You don’t want to
enter a conversation before you know what’s being talked about!

 Test different content and see what works for you

3. When?

 Tweet regularly: Think of Twitter as a networking event – if you never talk, nobody
is going to want to engage with you! Start with 1-2 tweets a day and gradually build
it up to around 10. There are tools like www.buffer.com which can schedule your
tweets for you in advance which means you can write your tweets in one sitting but
don’t forget to check your account several times every day just in case you need to
respond to some feedback. If you are away from the office, it’s a good idea to
download the Twitter app to your mobile.

 What time of day? Although stats say around lunchtime is good for tweeting, carry
out some A/B Testing - read our article for some more information

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 INCREASING YOUR
FOLLOWERS

You’ve set up your account but how do you build your followers?

 Join a twitter chat: you will probably find that your local area uses a # to let
followers join a conversation at a certain time each week. For example if you
live in the London area, you could join the chat #LondonHour – every Monday
evening between 7.30pm – 8.30pm

 Use the search function: try searching for keywords in your Twitter bar that
might be related to your business e.g. accountancy Dorset. You might find
someone who has tweeted about finding an accountant in your area so that you
can send them a tweet (using their @username) telling them about your
services

 Interact with people: don’t just wait for people to find you, go out there and
start introducing yourself

 Mention others: if you meet future clients or other businesses at a networking

event, mention them in a tweet. Hopefully they will retweet it to all their
followers

 Make sure your number of followers is about the same as the number of people
you are following otherwise you could fall foul of Twitter’s Best Practise Rules
and never buy followers as it could violate Twitter’s Ts and Cs.

 Be polite! Send people a DM to thank them for following you

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 AND FINALLY….

enjoy it! And make sure that you link your Twitter account to your website and all of your other
social media sites. If you have any other Twitter related questions or would like us to manage your
Twitter account for you, just get in touch 01722 671971 or by email [email protected]

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