Twitter for Business

Presented by Shelly Wolfe & Aimee KrummenacherWSI – We Simplify the Internet

What is Twitter?

It’s an online messaging service to distribute ideas, comments, & news over the internet.

• Began in 2006 as a side project at a podcasting company in CA• As of March 2009, unique visitors have grown 1382% in just 3 years to over 10 million users

Twitter Demographics

• 47% Male; 53% Female

• Over 70% of users are 18-49

• Average User Income: $0-$60K

• Over 60% are college educated

*SocialMediaToday.com, March 2009 (http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/78505)

Why Use Twitter for Business?

• Twitter basics

• Listening & mind-reading • Conversations & interaction

- Customer service- Building relationships

- Online reputation management • Goal setting & measurement

Twitter Basics

Create a Business Account

• Account is free

• Use your business as the name• Focus on 160 character description to highlight Twitter user with brief keyword rich description

• Add custom background

• Include relevant contact information, web address, email, etc.

Following vs. Follower

• Following: You’ll receive updates from that person/business & is great for networking

• Followers: People who follow you, may not be reciprocal

• RSS feed allows you to follow without showing that person you are following/unfollowing them

• Make sure to follow people/experts that are relevant to your industry

• Good rule of thumb for following: no more than 50 per day

• Don’t have to follow everyone who follows you

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Custom Backgrounds

Listening & Mind-Reading

Tracking Trends

• Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com)

• TwitScoop (http://twitscoop.com)

- The bigger the word, the high number of mentions in Twitter - Helpful for researching topics before they hit the mainstream trending topics

• Twopular (http://twopular.com)- Trending topics for different time segments- Measures popularity of topic over that given time

Important Topics to Listen for:

• Your own name

• Twitter account name

• Company, brand & products

• Competitors

• RSS Feeds

• backtweets.com – searches links that link back to your website that aren’t your domain

Conversations & Interactions

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Tweeting Best Practices

• Stay within 140 characters (your username counts)- Use + instead of &- Leave out (.) and other punctuation- Abbreviate- Eliminate (I) and “to be”- Use numerals instead of numbers

• Twitter character basics- d = private direct message- @name = public direct message- RT = retweet - # = used to denote a trending topic

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Tweeting Best Practices

• Be conversational- Ask & answer questions- Post facts, news, events, comments, etc.- Share experiences/opinions

• Use hashtags (#) when appropriate

• Avoid spam and don’t become a spammer

• Be interesting

• Average person tweets over 4x per day

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Re-Tweeting Best Practices (RT)

• RT news, events, interesting facts, humor, how-tos, etc.

• Stay within 140 character limit

• Can re-state message

• Don’t change the URL

• Give credit where credit is due: @Name

Goal Setting & Measurement

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Goal Setting

• Who is going to tweet, manage Tweeter, or implement a co-Tweet

• What do you want your campaign to accomplish?

• Use Twitter Best Practices

• Link back to your sites, publications, blogs, events, etc.

• Perform a live tweet

• Promote specials, coupons, fundraisers, contests, etc.

• Connect with local media

• Integrate with other social media

Tweeting Tips

• Be interesting• Be conversational• Follow relevant people

Variety of Business on Twitter

Tweet Measurement

• TweetStats (http://tweetstats.com)

• Bitly (http://bitly.com)

• Google Analytics Results

Suggested Follows

@wsiroi @ShellyWolfe @evee26 @AimeeSTL1 @WSISummit @ChrisBrogan @joelcomm @timoreilly @hubspot @TweetReport

Resources• The Twitter Book, Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein• Mashable.com• HubSpot.com• InSocialMedia.com